Scarborough Pirates vanquish Knights

Both teams used the strong wind well in their respective halves, making it very hard to judge the opposition’s kicking game.

Kippax opened the scoring when they took advantage of a flat-footed home defence, but the Pirates upped the pace and intensity of the game straight from kick-off, working well with strong running from Billy Parker and centre Matty Young, while Alex Collins also ran very strongly throught the game.

Kippax’s discipline started to crumble in the face of this intense home pressure, resulting in a sin-binning for the Knights, and the away team conceded several penalties. The away side were marched 10 metres back each time by the ref as they lost their heads.

In a very tight match, Kippax continued to throw wild tackles and poor decisions, and they found themselves further adrift thanks to tries from Scarborough’s Oliver Battye, Sam Hakings and a pacy double from winger Tom Jenkinson, with Tom Ratcliffe converting all but one of the tries.

Pirates, who had missed three weeks of training due to lack of numbers, soldiered on with fantastic kicking from Ratcliffe keeping the opposition at arm’s length as Adam Lee’s team held on for the win.

The man of the match went to Jenkinson for great pace down the wing for the hosts.