Newbury shocked as Green machine tramples the blues

what do you expect if you have the best ground in the league, immaculately bathed in warm spring sunshine, palatial facilites more like a Jarvis hotel than a mere clubhouse, a coach with substantial international experience, a team capable of playing the paciest, expansive running rugby in the league, coming off the back of a rich vein of form of seven wins out of the last nine? Victory?

Well not if you were the Newbury faithful who, after 30 minutes, were staring disbelievingly into a crushing 30 points abyss which could easily have been 30 points more writes Gordon Thomas.

On even greener grass than home, on-song Wharfedale had never felt more like sinking the "Blues" to record a first away victory at Noon Park.

True the home side salvaged some pride with a gritty revival after the break, but by then defeat - their heaviest of the season - was inevitable, and it gave Wharfedale their 11th successive league victory which leaves the Greens one point behind second placed Birmingham and sets up a truly crunch promotion encounter at Solihull next week.

The Greens' loyal travelling contingent could hardly have been prepared for the sheer running freedom of their team's overwhelming opening onslaught.

Six minutes of unrelenting fluid attacking back play, reminiscent of earlier Wharfedale golden eras, produced a pattern of overlap after glaring overlap. A stretched and desperate home defence struggled, just, to contain two-to-one wing finishing of first forwards Buckroyd and Vyvyan and then, twice in as many minutes, Hodgson and Ben Whitfield on the right. Inevitably, the variation of straight driving penetration produced an opening penalty for Ada Mounsey near the posts.

Neil Heseltine's immaculate distribution and shrewd orchestration from fly-half launched further waves of flowing attack, frequently from line out domination, which reduced the Newbury forwards' line to a gasping chasm. From one such "steal" Verity rampaged fully 50 yards before being hauled down close to the line. Something just had to give and after quarter of an hour of such unremitting furiously sustained assault full-back Jonathan Davies stepped inside to score near the posts to provide Mounsey with a simple conversion.

Stretched to the limit, the Newbury defence conceded two further close-range penalties to extend the margin to 16 points before Mounsey himself after 23 minutes and then Andy Hodgson scored further tries both goaled by the unerring winger to stretch the lead to a dominating and demoralising 30 points.

The Greens were so out in front that the home team, while winning penalties at both restarts, spurned eminently kickable positions and also passed up the obvious ploy of a kick to the corner in the knowledge that they could not guarantee securing their own line-out possession.

The immensity of the Newbury task was further underlined in the dying moments of the half when their one movement of sustained possession and characteristic wide passing back play required retrieval of the ball from three tackles before play even reached the openside wing. Having failed to cope with the Greens attacking brilliance they now were faced by their renowned formidable defence.

Having shipped more points in half an hour than in any previous full match this season, Newbury emerged in the second half in a determined and aggressive mood.

Indeed what followed was more damage infliction than mere damage limitation as the home pack treated rucks as a battleground which included such trench war subtleties as stamping and wild kamikaze diving over the top.

Spurred on by a double substitution, the home team were reduced to playing for sheer pride and self respect - which was just as well as the club stopped paying them four weeks ago!

For the remainder of the match Newbury attacked furiously in their often frantic efforts to redeem themselves. The classy combination play of stand-off Morgan Davis and centre Jeremy Griffiths and the driving forward support of number 8 Hennessy and prop Dan Davis threatened the Wharfedale line several times before a deft exchange of a cleverly disguised pass between the two backs enabled Griffiths to score near the posts for his partner to convert.

The home side threatened the Wharfedale line on several occasions but a combination of the resolute Green defence (with the inevitable Hodgson, David Whitfield, Verity and Vyvyan to the fore) and a touch of over anxiety in the Newbury catch-up game prevented any further score.

This resounding demolition of such demanding opposition - Newbury have always troubled the Greens with their pacey wide-running game, as the Avenue supporters can well attest - confirms Wharfedale's status as a genuinely accomplished side, and one which is respected as a front runner in the league, irrespective of the eventual outcome of the tight promotion race.

Their run of six successive way victories stretching back to mid-November augers well for next week's visit to second place Birmingham, still a point to the good.

But, even if successful there, the race for a promotion spot may well prolong itself tantalising to the very end of the season, as the best chance of their Midlands' rival losing a second time to forfeit their game in hand may be more the continual pressure of Wharfedale breathing down their backs than the actual capacity of their remaining opposition to do the job merely on their own.

Indeed it was difficult for even our eloquent chairman of selectors (the redoubtable Adge calling on all his powers of loquacious persuasion) to convince sceptical Blues' supporters at half time that this was not a completely new side from the one they saw at Threshfield back in September.

The fact that a side could with dedicated commitment to coaching and training develop the confidence and self-belief from a small pool of players to produce so complete a performance on the day seemed almost beyond the understanding of a mentality which courts success by buying players in (and then has difficulty meeting their financial commitments). There could just be a moral somewhere in there.

Wharfedale: J Davies, A Mouncey, A Hodgson, D Whitfield, B Whitfield, N Heseltine, G Smith, R Lancaster, J Lawn (capt), N Dickinson, D Lister, P Evans, R Buckroyd, H Verity, C Vyvyan. Subs (unused): C Ingram, S Allen, S Gilbert.

Newbury: M Roberts, T Holloway, J Griffiths, T Osman (B Wakfer 44 mins), D Underwood, M Davis, M Olden (capt), D Advise, R Kelley, B Williams, N Hunt, H Harridan (C Advise 47), S Gully, J Kindon, P Hennessy. Referee: Martin Fox.

o All roads lead from Threshfield to Birmingham for the big one tomorrow. Wharfedale have named an unchanged starting line-up with Daniel Harrison replacing Sean Gilbert on the bench. Directions to the ground (Sharman's Cross Road, Solihull, tel 0121-7057995) are: From Solihull town centre take Streetsbrook Road through traffic lights over hump back bridge. Second left into Sharman's Cross Road, ground 300 yards on left.

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