Casuals 15 Market Bosworth 34

Casuals suffer from a dearth of penalties in the 2nd half of the game and Mkt Bosworth pull away to record a comfortable win.

Casuals welcomed Market Bosworth to Canalside on Saturday, yet another side new to Casuals fixture list.

In absolutely ideal conditions, Market Bosworth played with the slight wind in the first half.
The first score came on 14 minutes when the visitors attacked moving the ball from one side of the pitch to the other, to get through to score near the posts.

Casuals seemed to cope with that, and withstood any MB attacks for a while, but then they were put under pressure with 3 quick penalties one, of which seemed a perfectly legitimate turnover when a tackled player was laid on his back with ball still in the air, and had the ball taken away from him. That put Casuals firmly on the back foot.
Following a warning from the ref, Casuals conceded yet another penalty, which MB converted.

And yet again another penalty, and MB put the ball into the corner, and drove over from the subsequent lineout, adding the conversion to lead 15 – 0 at half time.

Casuals burst into life in the second half and Steve Naylor was unlucky not to latch onto a kick ahead, just managing to knock on.
Higgins opened Casuals reply with a simply taken penalty.
Casuals forwards, were doing their best to disrupt MB, and when they applied pressure Higgins was able to break through and Naylor was put away for the try.

More great work from the forwards kept MB at bay, and when a long kick forward was hustled into touch close to MB’s line, Casuals won the lineout, and as they pushed forward, Higgins zipped through at the back of the line for the try, which he converted to level the scores.

However the revival fizzled out as Casuals conceded more penalties for supposed persistent offending, and when Sarno was trapped under a ruck, he was shown the yellow for not rolling away. That turned the game in favour of Market Bosworth, and they took advantage despite losing 2 men themselves to the dreaded yellow in 2 separate incidents.

The game ended poorly for Casuals as Bosworth managed to score 3 tries late on, as Casuals seemed to turn off in the face of the mass of penalties being awarded. Market Bosworth had a fair share of penalties against them, and at one stage both sets of spectators were left wondering what some of the decisions were all about, especially as they could not decipher the signals, or lack of, and seemingly very little prompting from the ref.

Shame, as the game got quite tense in the 3rd quarter, and a good battle seemed on the cards. (Instead of that – yellow cards)

Next week Oakham away 3pm kick off