Ambleside Centurions hosted Hawcoat Park in Counties 1 Cumbria’s Match of the Day.
Although the Lakes side lost 12-0 their performance and league position indicated just how far they’ve come since rejoining the League set-up.
Saturday marked the date exactly two years and 50 games since the resurrection of the Ambleside Centurions team.
The Centurions took to the field at Galava Park unbelievably sitting third in the league with their visitors from Barrow sitting one place above them.
Due to a number of injuries home coach Matty Kaye had to ring the changes and give six young players with an average age of 19 their full league debut against a hardened opposition who might have been expecting an easy afternoon at the office.
Straight from the kick-off the referee had to stamp his authority on the game with both teams being on the wrong end of his whistle.
Hawcoat Park started the game best and were both stronger and quicker in every aspect of their play.
In the 10th minute with a well worked move from their inside centre bringing the full back into the line they created an overlap for Joe Dalton to score out wide and Dan Lightfoot added the conversion.
The young Ambleside side began to grow in confidence and with Kaye pushing Hawcoat back with a great kicking game he continually turned the big opposition forwards round and pushed them back down the pitch.
Unfortunately, Ambleside gave away a penalty allowing Hawcoat to kick to the corner of the Ambleside 22 and set up a strong driving maul from the line out.
Ambleside could not stop the momentum of the maul and the Hawcoat number eight Alfie White crashed over in the corner for an unconverted try.
This is when the game in the past would have ran away from Ambleside but with young players from the local university plus debutants Butler and Tom Huggan smashing everything in sight and showing no fear Ambleside managed to fight their way back into the game.
A clever kick through from Kaye into the dead ball area looked like it had been touched down by Ambleside’s Red Marshall but the referee disagreed and awarded a 22 drop out.
At half time Hawcoat made a couple of changes and would probably have expected to pull away from the young Ambleside team.
However, roared on by a huge crowd from the university celebrating Women’s Day at the club, Ambleside raised their game and straight from a great restart from Penn Ambleside’s new signing Huggan smashed the Hawcoat ball carrier causing him to knock on in the tackle.
The game went back and forward for the next forty minutes with both sides sharing a number of scoring opportunities and yellow cards.
Ambleside broke from their own half through Barber, who fed Marshall, and then on to Kaye who scored under the posts only to be pulled back by the referee for a forward pass.
As the game crept into injury time all of the Ambleside forwards kept up the pressure and played for the full 80 minutes, something they have not managed to do all season. Unfortunately time ran out and the game ended just about deservedly in Hawcoat’s favour.
Man Of The Match for Ambleside was the smashing machine that was Huggan and the team performance against an experienced Hawcoat side will surely make other teams start to appraise Ambleside in a new light.
The Hawcoat Park man of the match was Will Coles.
