Bees 24-10 Bridlington

This wont be a game that lives long in the memory as two squads of largely indistinguishable men thrashed about in the mud, while the Wagon Lane crowd peered through the gloom to try and work out what was going on out in the middle of the field. The Bees never really got going and the visitors were far more of a threat than they or their committee had promised to be before the game. The four try bonus point win, their seventh in succession, lifts the Bees into third position in the table, with an interesting tussle with closest geographical local rivals, Cleckheaton, to come this Saturday, before the league programme closes down for Christmas. The Bees are the only side in the top five who have played seven of their opening fixtures at home and are also the only side in the top five to have lost twice at home, however, those early losses to Scarborough and Huddersfield YMCA, the two sides ahead of the Bees at the top of the table, seem to belong to a different age. The Bees also lost to Cleckheaton back in September, but have a chance to redeem themselves against this coming weekend an also against YMCA in their opening fixture of the New Year, when they make the short hop down the M62 on Saturday 5th January. The Bees began this fixture brightly enough and were on the scoreboard after three minutes as Jack Malthouse skidded in at the corner right in front of the clubhouse, with a desperate defender hanging on to his legs as he reached the line for the score. The Bridlington defender snapped the corner flag as he aquaplaned out of play in Malthouse's wake, which gave rise to one of the more entertaining moments of the afternoon as Ryan Wederell, starting from the bench, was handed a desert spoon for his first action of the afternoon, to try and dig the remains of the flag post out of the ground, which he did successfully.

Bridlington replied with a well taken score of their own ten minutes later as Ralph Johnson scurried over out on the left. With Harvey Morrison addding the extras, Bridlington were in front with 14 minutes played. Seven minutes later the lead changed hands as Ali Macdonald thundered up the middle swatting defenders out of his way to the line. A further seven minutes passed and Macdonald was over the whitewash again, and with Lance Taylor converting the second of Macdonald's brace with Morrison chipping in a penalty between the scores, it was 17-10 to the home side with 28 minutes played. The sides turned round at the same score, but the Bees came out of the blocks for the second half looking far livelier, even though they had Gene Te Amo in the sin bin. Within four minutes they had added the bonus point score as Lance Taylor scooted over and then added the conversion. With 36 minutes to play and the elements at the backs of the home side, the Wagon Lane faithful possibly expected the scoreboard to start moving, but it was not to be the case. There followed nearly a full half of handling errors and falls on both sides of the ball and in the final analysis, which had much of the crowd looking at their watches hoping for the final whistle, but, with no points awarded for style, the home side had done enough to add five points to their standing in the league table and also navigated around a possible banana skin to keep the march up the table going.

By
Nick Patterson