1st XV
W 22-20
League
25-01-2025
Morley
By c
Scarborough RUFC climbed to second in Regional Two North East after a scrappy, 22-20, win over Morley at Silver Royd.
Matty Jones side welcomed Morley for the second time in January, following the postponement earlier on this month. His side made an encouraging start to the game and raced into a 5-0 lead when Prop Ropeti Ropeti peeled off from the maul and bundled over. The game then turned into an extremely scrappy affair, with both sides exchanging handling errors in the middle of the pitch. In the 20th minute, Scarborough were reduced to 14 with Drew Govier shown a yellow card for a high tackle. Fast forward 10 minutes and Morley’s George Bowen was also shown a yellow card for a high tackle close to the try line. The lead was then extended to 12-0 just one minute later when Jack Holt took a penalty quickly and reached to score. Ollie Carroll curved the conversion between the sticks. The remainder of the first-half was played inside the Scarborough half, with Morley knocking on the door on numerous occasions. They finally broke through on the brink of half-time. With a man advantage, following Kahu Craig-TeRanga’s yellow card, Noah Hawkins ran in a try in the corner for 12-5.
The second-half started in similar fashion, with Morley causing problems before Hawkins slotted a penalty to cut the deficit to 12-8. Carroll responded with a penalty of his own before a try from Kai Taylor-Smith helped level the game at 15-15 in the 64th minute. In the 69th minute, the home side re-established their lead when Harry Domett broke through the tackles, found Craig-Te-Ranga who offloaded for Jack Davies to score in the corner. Carroll added the difficult conversion to make it 22-20. Tom Stansfield scored a try of his own from a driving maul to cut the deficit to 22-20 as the game headed towards an exciting conclusion.
Scarborough travel to league leaders Rochdale next weekend.