Lymm lose home record

LYMM Rugby Union Club’s fine home record, unbeaten since Sept 2008, ended in a frenetic encounter with near neighbours Kersal.
It would seem that the title race has been reopened with 2nd placed Northwich now only 2 points behind the long time league leaders. This result also brings Kersal and Liverpool St Helens back into the hunt for the top two places.
Lymm’s success has been founded on the best home defence in the top 6 tiers of English rugby.
To allow the visitors three easy tries in the first half was always going to make a victory unlikely. Kersal began the game showing the greater urgency. Aided by officious refereeing and poor Lymm discipline they found themselves able to hit big holes in the Lymm midfield.
A penalty on the half way line on 4 mins highlighted the discipline issue. Backchat by the home side allowed Kersal an easy penalty. On 20 mins steady Kersal pressure allowed their centre to walk through missed tackles making it 10-0 with the conversion.
Seven minutes later Lymm exploited the blind side and Joe Knowles released Ollie Higginson to score. Knowles converted making it10-7.
On 33 mins the referee sinbinned O’ Grady for punching and Harrison for being punched. By the time the influential Harrison came back on the score was 25- 10 to the visitors. It was a big decision by the referee and matches often rest on such things.
The Kersal winger went over on 34 and scrum half found another gap on 40. A good Hughes drop goal in the middle of that gave Lymm some hope but on the stroke of the 48 min first half more back chat gave the Kersal kicker a better penalty chance which he took making it 10-25 at the break.
Lymm needed a good start. A Knowles penalty on 49 and then a Mark Sutton try on 52, after lovely work from Pickles made it 18-25. A further Knowles penalty on 62 minutes suggested the tide had turned at 21-25. The next score was going to win it and that went to Altrincham Kersal with a controversial catch and drive from a line out. Controversial because Lymm had a forward being treated at the time of the line out and the referee should have stopped play to even up the line out. Again matches turn on these decisions.
Any chance of a late Lymm surge died when Broadbent was binned for backchat with three minutes remaining.
Head coach Kinsey refused to blame the referee. “A lack of maturity against a side who still have justifiable title aspirations was our downfall. Every team we face will up their game and we must respond accordingly.”
Man of the match war horse Sutton who felt: “We lacked physicality and temperament across the board” and Director Of Rugby Richard Boundy suggested: “ This was coming. We will start playing teams that have to win at this time of the season ,whether its relegation or promotion and we have to expect to dog it out. However you don’t become a bad team overnight and this weekend we have a great opportunity to put it right. Our next two fixtures are against teams in relegation trouble and its going to be hard.”
Lymm travel to Aspatria on Saturday.
Lymm. 15 Knowles 14 J Johnstone , 13 Williamson ,12 Fletcher C (Swetman) ,11 Butler ,10 Hughes ,9 Stringer 1 ,Brown ,2 Harrison ,3 Broadbent ,4 Higginson ,5 Pickles (Darbyshire) ,6 Cullinane ,7 Ashall( Bates) 8 Sutton .