Leodensians 23

Keighley 11

Keighley were drawn to play away again for the third time in the Intermediate Cup and had the pleasure of playing Leodiensians, fellow contestants in Yorkshire 2 League.

On a day which was prone to drizzle, Keighley had to replace injured fly-half Johnny Harrison had through injury, at fly half with colt Richard Cavender, bring in Nick Wright on the wing for Kevin Young who in turn replaced injured centre Chris Dooling and normal wing man John Hinchcliffe went to full back in place of Warren Knowles, also injured.

Immediately from the kick-off, Keighley were on the attack and three excellent pieces of forward play in the loose rucking, found themselves within 10 yards of the oppositions try line, an advantage which they did not squander and from a formed scrum, Morgan Bailey dived over for a try which was unconverted.

There followed some good rugby by both sides with minor indiscretions giving each side a kickable penalty and within twenty minutes the score was running at 3 - 8 to Keighley. A lapse in defence on the stroke of half time allowed fly half McCormack of Leos to sell an outrageous dummy when within 20 yards of the Keighley line to give an inside pass to the storming full back, Barlow, to score under the posts. A try which was duly converted and the turn round score was 10 - 11 to Keighley.

Keighley in the first half played very good rugby particularly in view of the fact they had two men sin binned within minutes of each other. At times, their presence did not appear to be missed but that was due to the extra sterling work been done by their team-mates in their absence. Also much credit must be paid to the 'new' pairing of halfbacks Ian Woodwiss and Richard Cavender. Cavender's touch kicking and passing the ball at the right time seemed to come from an old head on young shoulders and spells well for the future.

Following the re-start, Keighley started off well but for some reason after 15 minutes went off the boil and allowed Leos to pressure them into mistakes and gave away too many penalties, two of which were kicked to put them into the lead at 16 - 11. Too often Keighley were caught offside or causing infringements and the referee quite rightly penalised the visiting team. On many occasions it did not appear that they had a General on the field to muster his side and the loss of Captain Johnny Harrison became apparent. To bolster the side, both Lee Gordon and Max Cummins were replaced by veterans Tim Midgley and John Duffy who although bringing fresh legs, were unable to fire up the Keighley side.

Although some good runs were made by the centres, in particular one by Dale Towler, the decision by the referee to bring play back some 30 yards for an earlier infringement did not seem logical. The indecisive play by Keighley allowed a switch play behind a Leos scrum to give them their second try which was engineered again by the fly half who was closely trailed by the hooker Forton who scored near the posts, against a try which was converted.

Keighley seemed to go off the boil in the second half of the game and the fire and enthusiasm of the first half was missing. The purple patches that we did see were not supported by continuing play and when we had the opposition on the back foot we did not seem to have the guile to finish the job off and score points.