By community reporter
On what was a beautiful Saturday in March, West Leeds took on high-flying Beverley who arrived at Blue Hill Lane sitting joint second in the table and on course to achieve their ambitions of promotion.
It looked as if it was going to be a tough afternoon for the home side, based on the league table and recent form that has only seen Beverley lose once in 10 games to top of the table Goole and the very vocal confidence shown by the traveling side.
However, that wasn’t to be the case and Beverley seemed rattled early on.
West Leeds started with a bang, receiving the kick off, moving the ball edge to edge up the field and all too easily Nick Jones powered over after only two minutes of play. Keir Breakwell stepped up and missed the conversion.
Even though West dominated possession they struggled to convert that into points and soon after the Beverley 10 put the 12 away to walk through the defence and score a converted try. Score 5-7.
The rest of the first half continued in the same vein with Breakwell slotting over a penalty and towards the end of the half Beverley’s scrum, who were on top and causing lots of problems for the home side, turned over a West Leeds scrum and moved the ball well for Beverley’s 13 to score under the posts for a half time score of 11-14 to the visitors.
Now what was to come in the second half is what can only be described as the blueprint to make a very good side look very average. Beverley will say that they played badly, however the reality was that for 40 minutes they were completely dominated by the home side in every aspect of the game.
They were bullied into submission by wave after wave of attack, aggressive defence and intelligent play saw the West score 29 unanswered points with four tries with Bryn Perrot taking up the kicking duties to add three conversions and a penalty.
The first of the four second half tries saw Dan Smith take a quick ball from Tomek Tsang and powered through the defence to score under the posts.
This was quickly followed by a great set peace play that saw Barney Carter who was destructive all afternoon pick up from the base of the scrum and fed Tsang, who straightened the defence and hit Sam Marshall on a hard line. He knocked tacklers out of his way to score in the corner.
The floodgates now opened and West were in complete control and were breaking tackles at ease. From a charge into the visitors’ 22 Tsang saw his opportunity at the base, threw a obvious dummy that Beverley bought not for the first time and he ran in under the posts with minutes to go.
A completely shell-shocked Beverley again allowed West Leeds to move them around with ease and create space for Sam Neave to turn the 13 inside and out and run through. With one defender to beat he used a strong fend to cruise in under the posts to score with a theatrical swan dive.
Final score was 40-14 to the home side.
Man of the match could have easily gone to several of the West Leeds players who all put in a great shift. However, an outstanding 80-minute performance from Tomek Tsang saw the number 9 awarded MOTM.
It was a great day for West Leeds all round, who have two away fixtures in the coming weeks to finish off a challenging league campaign. But with performances like that becoming a regular occurance since the new year there is a lot to be positive about.
