Northern won their third pre-season warm up game 80-29 away to West Hartlepool. Match summary thanks to Alan Belford.
With conditions warm and sunny at Brinkburn and only a brisk breeze to contend with, both teams started with strong fifteens on the park.
In the first of three sessions, West took an early lead when their prop crashed over for a converted try after tidying up a five metre lineout overthrow and barging through the Northern defence.
Northern responded emphatically by scoring four tries in succession through Jimmy Howarth, Ben Bishop, Josh Coombs & Ben Riley with a combination of pace, power and slick handing, Will Jobling converting three of the four with excellent kicks.
West pulled a converted try back after electing for a five metre penalty scrum which Northern contained but were unable to stop the home centre scoring from a short range crash ball.
Northern concluded the first period with a converted try by Ayden Knott, powering over after good forward interplay from a penalty lineout in the home 22. 33-14 to Northern at the break of session 1.
The second session started with Northern gifting a try to West when a dropped pass in midfield was collected by the West wing who raced in unopposed.
As with the first session, Northern regathered and showed their dominance by scoring another five tries by Jonny Dowell, Harvey Guthrie, Jonny Dowell again, Alex Surrey & Joe Fearns with four more conversions by Will Jobling. 33-5 at the break of session 2.
The final session saw several changes made by Northern with both teams scoring a try each, Northern's coming from Tom Parks and Ben Bishop and West's coming from their back row and wing. Some confusion about conversions meant that both teams should assume their kicks were good but for some reason West elected to take theirs and missed both! Given this, the session ended 14-10 to Northern.
With a cumulative final score of 80-29 to Northern this was a good indication of both our strength in depth and our slick, fast-paced game being on track for the eventual start of our season. Our thanks must go to West who gave us a good run out and gave them a stern test before their league season starts. Next Saturday we entertain Tynedale Raiders at home in our next warm up game where we hope to continue building our pre-season form.
