Ikeston 10 - 17 Stags

The Stags came through their toughest test to date on a pitch made slippery from the early afternoon rain at the Stute.

As you would expect, handling was difficult for both teams who tried to apply themselves to the task in hand and handling errors plagued our attack throughout. The Stags made significant changes from the team that overwhelmed Lincoln last time out with Connor Nixon, Sam Everett and Morgan Tunnicliffe dropping down from the 1st XV and Alex Cooke and Iwan Burgwin making their Stags debut’s off the bench.

Ilkeston started strongly and put the Stags under considerable pressure with a series of forward drives, kicks to the corner and some tight exchanges at scrummage time.

However, Stags were equal to the task was some dynamic defence forcing mistakes from the home team. The pick of the tackles came from Nixon who drove the home scrum-half backwards with interest after he tried to attack the blindside. However, Ilkeston managed to open their account with a straight forward penalty to take the lead 3-0.

The Stags gradually got on top and were camped for some considerable time within the Ilkeston 22. The ball was moved from a set scrum by Evan Carey to George Marsden, who found his centre partner Sam Rackclyeft on his shoulder running at pace. Racklyeft took the pass and drove over the line for our opening try. Callum Rowe, taking over the kicking duties from Lewis Gardner, kicked the conversion for a 7-3 lead. We lost Tunnicliffe to a sprained ankle halfway through the first half, who was replaced by Cooke. The remainder of the half was played out without further incident and the Stags held a slender 4 point lead.

Almost immediately from the kick-off Ilkeston missed an equally straight forward penalty chance from in front of the posts now kicking down the hill. Hinckley spent the majority of the opening exchanges of the second half on the back foot, but a rare foray into the Ilkeston half allowed Rowe to slot a penalty of his own to move the Stags out to 3-10. Better was yet to come and it again started at the set piece. Burgwin, who had replaced Carey at scrum-half, fed Everett from a scrum close to the halfway. Everett did well to pick the ball up on the bounce and found a gap to break the line before drawing the feedback and sending Tyler Moseley over the line. Moseley still had plenty to do and showed a clean pair of heels to win the footrace. Rowe routinely converted to move Hinckley out to 3-17. Ilkeston stormed back into , however, and their second row barged his way through the Stags defence to touch down for a try. This was also routinely converted to bring the home side back to 10-17.

Hinckley managed the final few minutes well to take the win and go clear at the top of the league.

A tough game in tough conditions, but a good victory on the road against one of the form teams of the league.

A rest next week and then Burton 2’s at home on the 14th October.

MAN OF THE MATCH: Sam Racklyeft - continued his good early season form and got on the score sheet again.

UTS