National Division One

Wharfedale 59 Liverpool St Helens 0

With an awesome display of forward power the Green Machine started 1999 with a bang, scoring nine tries to demolish bottom club Liverpool St Helens and register their biggest margin of victory in 12 years of league rugby, writes Keith Lewis.

Wharfedale's fifth consecutive home win takes them into sixth place in the division on points difference above Rosslyn Park, Newbury and Reading and back to square one with a 50 per cent return from the 16 league games played, cancelling out the effects of bleak September.

The recovery has been a major achievement for the 1st XV squad and their dedicated coaches. Hopefully with 10 games still to play nobody will become complacent. A few more performances like this could make 98/9 a truly memorable season but with eight teams currently in the mid-table group and rumours of more close season restructuring competition is likely to be fierce in the remaining games.

Charlotte Bronte wrote in Jane Eyre.....'most true is it that beauty is in the eye of the gazer." But if she had been at The Avenue on Saturday she might also have needed the insight which comes with a pair of cauliflower ears to fully appreciate the quality of Wharfedale's rugby.

A howling gale and treacly conditions underfoot ensured it was not a day for dashing three-quarter moves or risk taking of any sort and the Greens sensibly played it tight against a LSH team who on previous visits have shown that they are capable of scoring tries from all corners of the ground.

Collectively and individually the Wharfedale pack were in tremendous form, squeezing the life out of LSH in the tight and pounding away in the loose with all the fire and ferocity which befits their tradition. Behind them fly-half David Pears ensured territorial advantage with a range of astute kicks and the rest of the backs looked sharp in attack without getting many chances. The whole team defended with such concentration and determination that they fully deserved their second clean sheet in successive weeks.

With former West Hartlepool and North Division flanker Paul Evans converted to the second row to partner the ever impressive David Lister and prop John Metcalfe showing the kind of form which once made him a Yorkshire regular, Dennis Wood and Richard Lancaster had to be content with seats on the bench at the start. Prolific scorer Adam Mounsey was a welcome sight in another thermal substitute's suit after recovering from an early season appendix operation.

Founded in 1857 as Liverpool, LSH are one of the oldest rugby clubs in the world and were in the elite English First Division as recently as 1991.

They boast 51 full internationals among their former players, including Ray French, Tom Brophy, Fran Cotton, Mike Slemen, John Horton, Maurice Colclough, Dewi Morris and Nigel Heslop. How they must have wished for some of them in this game!

To the immense credit of the visitors the game was played in excellent spirit throughout and was distinguished by an absence of penalties, six being the suggested total for the whole game.

Playing into the wind the Dalesmen took 14 minutes to open their account, Pears forcing a touch in the corner and Lister's secure lineout ball finding its way to Metcalfe who crashed over for his first league try since January 1996, against Kendal away.

With Evans contributing some useful lineout possession and prop Neil Dickinson doing his best to obliterate anyone with a Scouse accent the Greens did not have to wait long before their next try came.

Half the team combined in a powerful 50-metre drive started by the back row of Hedley Verity, Russ Buckroyd and Charlie Vyvyan and when LSH stand-off Graham Close knocked on over his line No 8 Vyvyan plunged to claim a pushover try at the resulting scrum.

The game's most spectacular try came on the half hour when LSH centre Dominic Carter kicked dead and Wharfedale were awarded a scrum just outside their own '22'. Breaking right Pears flicked an overhead pass to Andy Hodgson and the centre shrugged off two close-range tackles before bursting clear and racing 60 metres for a touchdown by the posts.

It was a fitting way for the former Bradford Bulls player to sign off before starting a new rugby league career with Wakefield Trinity.

Twenty-two-year-old Hodgson has been a Wharfedale player since the age of five and will hopefully return before too long.

Buckroyd and Verity snuffed out most LSH attacks before they got going and the rest fell either to dynamic tackles in midfield or punishing clearances from Pears and fullback Neil Heseltine.

By the 60th minute two further pushover tries had been added thanks to relentless forward pressure from the Greens' pack and some deft downward pressure by firstly scrum-half Dan Harrison and then the ever boisterous Buckroyd. In between hooker John Lawn powered on to Dan Harrison's slick pass to plunge over and with LSH beginning to lose their shape centre Glen Harrison took advantage of a defensive fracas to get his name on the try list.

Leading 45-0 with 15 minutes left Wharfedale gradually introduced all their replacements and two of them, Mounsey and Sam Allen, combined for the game's eighth try. Mounsey made it possible by collecting from a restart and putting LSH's Scott Pearson under pressure with a pin-point kick to the try line. Mounsey and Allen arrived together to tackle the fullback and Allen was alert enough to touch down for his first league try.

With Rob Sugden and Graham Smith quickly into the action in the final stages, replacement prop Lancaster also grabbed his first Wharfedale try - when he shook off several would-be tacklers on a swerving, side-stepping, 50-metre race to the line. Romantic fiction maybe but even those with cauliflower ears can dream occasionally. In reality he was mauled over by the rest of the pack from five metres out.

On the kind of day when no-one would choose to be a winger Ben Whitfield and Steve McManus contributed to the whole-team effort and Pears had another fine game at fly-half, directing operations and landing seven conversions to bring his season's tally to 180 points.

This Saturday the Greens have no fixture and their league campaign resumes at Birmingham Solihull on January 16.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.