Hinckley’s 1st XV made the short trip to Bretton Woods to take on newly promoted Peterborough Lions in the opening rugby fixture of the 2014/15 N3M league season.

Anticipating a close hard fought contest Hinckley were rocked by the withdrawal of through injury of John Roux and Matt Loveday during the week and Steve Harvey
in the warm up. Mitch Culpin and Dave Weston formed the centre partnership, while Josh Smith and Liam Warren came in at Full back and Prop respectively. Alex Salt,Tom Hilyer and Dave Masserella made up the rejigged bench. Weston, Warren and fly half Mark Lord all made their 1st XV league debuts.

The home side kicked off and immediately set the tone of the game with a hard nosed and aggressive approach. Hinckley handled the initial pressure and scored first through a Joe Glover penalty after Rich Harris very nearly made it into the corner wide out after good approach work from Lord and Weston. Lions responded with a penalty and a converted try of their own to take a 10-3 lead in the opening quarter. Glover missed a penalty and back came the home side with a well worked converted try and another penalty to extend their lead to 20-3. Glover missed another penalty before Josh Smith outflanked the home defence for a well taken try, unfortunately Glover couldn’t convert 20-8.
At this stage Hinckley were finding life difficult in every aspect of the game with the lineout especially a problem as was the home sides crunching first up tackles.
However, just before the interval the home fly half was a little too reckless and was red carded for a tip tackle on Josh Smith. Hinckley pounded the home try line with a series of rolling mauls and scrummages - they really should have scored! Increasingly desperate Lions defence kept the visitors out and the crucial chance was gone. To have gone into the interval only seven points adrift Hinckley would have still been in the game

Half time Peterborough Lions 20 points Hinckley 8 points.

With the Lions down to fourteen men you would have expected that Hinckley would make in roads, but it wasn’t to be as the home side still stifled possession and Hinckley had to live off scraps. The Hinckley set piece scrummage gradually improved, the rolling maul made an appearance, Ben Avent won his fair share of turnovers at the breakdown, but the Lions still dominated to score three more penalties catching the visitors offside on each occasion.
Not until the latter stages of the game did Hinckley put pressure on the Lions line and after a yellow card to a home forward the visitors scored a rolling maul try with debutant Liam Warren getting the touchdown. Mark Lord continued the visitors kicking woes with the missed conversion. Peterborough saw out the final minutes and claimed a 29 points to 13 opening day victory at Hinckley’s expense.

Overall, it was a disappointing display from Hinckley although the try scoring was shared 2-2, but Lions nailed seven from eight kicks at goal while Hinckley responded with one from five. With those statistics and the dynamic style of the powerful Lions pack the result could only go one way - I’m sure they will cause problems for all the fancied teams in this league.
The only consolation is that the season is not won on the first game of the season so bring on Sandbach to Leicester Road next week and a much improved performance!