Boston 17 Nottingham Casuals 11

Midlands 3 East North

Boston 17 Nottingham Casuals 11

In the only game to be played in the Midlands East leagues, Casuals must be wishing they had stayed at home, instead of battling through the snow to get to Boston.
A loss they did not want, especially as it dents their push for promotion,

Playing under floodlights, on a reasonable surface Casuals must have thought that the game was theirs for the taking. In variable conditions with a little bit of snow, but bitterly cold, it was always going to be a lottery whether players would be able to play any semblance of Rugby, and to their credit they did try, but unfortunately the game was littered with handling errors.

The opening score came after only 2 minutes, when an attempted clearing kick was safely caught on the right wing by Josh Slack, and the Casuals backs quickly turned defence into attack, Mark Higgins going in at the left hand corner.

Boston unfortunately came back after 10 minutes.
They were awarded a penalty which was kicked deep into Casuals half, and from the subsequent lineout, Boston's pack simply drove over for the try, a conversion giving the home side the lead.
With a penalty shortly after Boston went 10 – 5 up.

A silly offence followed and Higgins after being body checked without the ball, put over a fairly simple kick (under normal circumstances) to bring Casuals back to within 2 points at 10 – 8.

The second half was at first a fairly even contest, but despite Casuals growing advantage, and a reasonable supply of ball to the backs, this was not translated into points. Maybe Casuals should have played 9 man rugby and let the backs freeze, but they chose to move it, and far too often the ball was dropped, although Boston suffered as much as Casuals.

Eventually Higgins managed to squeeze a penalty off the crossbar to give Casuals the lead again by just 1 point.

As the game headed to its conclusion, Casuals looked to have sneaked the win.
But with about an inexplicable 12 minutes of extra time on the clock, Boston speculatively ran a ball down the left wing, and instead of the ball carrier being blasted into Yorkshire, they managed to slip through a raft of attempted tackles, Boston scoring a converted try to win, and send Casuals players and hardy spectators home very unhappy at this start of 2010.