Last updated at 09:49, Friday, 20 November 2009

Acklam 16, Ponteland 8

It may have come 24 hours late, but Ponteland suffered their very own Friday the 13th at the weekend.

They slumped to their first league defeat of the season in disappointing fashion against Acklam.

While the Middlesbrough side were undoubtedly the strongest team Ponteland have faced so far this season, the manner of the defeat will be of concern to Danny Harrison’s troops, who simply were not at the races.

Despite a bright opening spell, Pont soon found themselves on the back foot and it was the home side who took the lead just eight minutes in.

A line out on the clubhouse side of the field was won by Acklam, who flung the ball out to the opposite side, where the flying winger made the most of his overlap to score a try right in the corner.

The Teessiders had the chance to double their lead 10 minutes later as a ball was stolen, only for the winger to knock on when he had a clear run in on the try line.

In truth, the home side could have been out of sight within the first half hour as they then went on to spurn another opportunity, as the centre was this time guilty of dropping the ball as the line beckoned.

While the Ponteland forwards looked dominant in the scrums and the line out ball was generally good, too often handling errors of their own were to blame as the ball was dropped on numerous occasions, and the level of passing was well below par.

Acklam added to their lead on 30 minutes with a well converted penalty to make it 8-0.

Only Will Newbigin and Dan Walton looked on form in Pont’s back line as some neat kicks from both, as well as some fine tidying up from Newbigin, kept Ponteland in it.

Walton did miss a chance to get Pont back into it as he hacked a penalty wide of the posts, but he soon made amends, sending one over before half time to keep Pont within touching distance at 8-3 at the break.

Unfortunately it was to be the last contribution from the in form fly half who suffered a leg injury on the stroke of half time, forcing Pont to send Will McGawley into the centres, with Peter Maughan coming on at scrum half.

They were soon up against it as Acklam fly half Chris Walker sent over a drop goal within two minutes of the restart.

Moments later, Pont’s problems worsened as winger Jonathan Murphy was sin binned after blocking his opposite number off the ball and any chance of the visitors getting back into the game looked over.

They did respond brightly and enjoyed their best spell of the match, spending a long period by the Acklam try line, but they failed to make the moment count, and Acklam cleared.

Any possibility of victory was then put to bed as Acklam scored their second try of the match.

Some neat work from man of the match Phil Mableson saw the number eight go over in the corner to give the home side what appeared to be an unassailable 16-3 lead.

Pont did manage a late consolation as Maughan went over on the blind side of the scrum but it was the last play of the game.

Alan Moses’s drop goal conversion sailed wide of the posts on the referee’s whistle.

Ponteland’s performance in this match was just as ugly as the back drop of Middlesbrough’s factories and power plants,but seven wins from eight matches still represents an excellent start to the season.

First published at 09:37, Friday, 20 November 2009
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk