Luctonians 15

Otley 20

A GAME of two halves saw Otley claim their third consecutive away win against Luctonians on Saturday.

In a match played on the Luctonians' second team pitch because of the amount of standing water on the first, it was never going to be an easy game.

The hosts opened the scoring with a Will Burton penalty on four minutes, and they got their first try five minutes later when Frank Kelly went over.

Joe Rowntree kicked Otley into the game just after the quarter hour mark, but unfortunately he went off injured shortly afterwards.

A converted Lucs' try through Rob Lewis did not deter the visitors.

Otley exerted their forwards' power game in the atrocious conditions from the re-start and had the Herefordshire team on the back foot deep in their red zone on multiple occasions, but couldn't break their defence leading to a half-time score of 15-3.

Otley carried on where they left off and finally Lucs' luck broke when Conor Turner was yellow carded.

Freddie Watson went over from a driving maul, and seven minutes later Brett Mitchell followed suit, which Ben Magee converted to level the scores at 15-15.

With 15 minutes to go, Paul Petchey capitalised on a loose ball to run in from half-way to take the lead from the first time.

With the difficult weather conditions, the game became more attritional and it was Otley who handled the position better and defended their line admirably to see out the game.

NICK DOYLE