ToWn Tries: Sturm, Lewthwaite and Smith: Goals: Hetherington 3 .
Hornets Try: Sculthorpe: Goals: Wood 2.
Attendance: 1384.
Our Man of the Match: Danny Sculthorpe.
If you die and go to hell, every game you watch for the rest of eternity will look like this.
Derwent Park in the pouring rain - especially stood under the bit of the main stand that ejaculates bucketfuls of rainwater onto your head at regular intervals - has to be the second worst place to be on a Sunday afternoon (after Whitehaven, where they don't have a roof at all.)
So, Martin Hall and Neil Flanagan brought their untried Hornets side to the sub-tropical paradise that is Cumbria.
In pretty poor conditions both sides, aided by the referee - the congenitally myopic Mr Lee - contrived to ruin a bad game. ToWn have made some pretty impressive signings and we thought they'd cause us some real problems and on 8 minutes, we thought we might be proved right.
After some early pressure (if you count "running around in the opponents' half wondering what to do next" as pressure) Manihera fed hooker Sice about 35 metres out, he exploited the huge hole in the Hornets defence to scoot through, finding the supporting Sturm with a neat pass for him to score by the posts. Hetherington added the conversion.
8 minutes, 6-nil.
We braced ourselves for the deluge of points, but the only deluge we got was from the leaky guttering as ToWn failed to build significantly on their good start. In a first half devoid of any real incident, the home crowd was incensed as Andy Ireland bodychecked Tane Maneheira, who droped like a rock and lay there waiting for a) a penalty b) Ireland to be sent off and c) his BAFTA. One out of three wasn't bad - to the consternation of some Scouse Slapper stood in front of us who failed to grasp the concept that Rugby League is indeed a contact sport. Towards the end of the half, Hetherington traded penalties with Wood and Hornets went in at half time trailing 10-2
Town opened the second half scoring on 59 minutes when, with Hornets defenders snoozing around him, Manihera ran the ball on last tackle, finding Lewthwaite who kicked through and raced on to flap hopefully as the ball bounced throught the in-goal area and touch down. I was stood over 100 metres away and can categorically say that, from that distance I'd have gone for the screen. Hetherington missed the conversion.
Leigh Smith plodded past a static defence on 70 minutes to extend ToWn's lead to 18 - 2. Hetherington hit the post with the conversion attempt. Ha!
With two minutes remaining Danny Sculthorpe bamboozled the ToWn defence by running hard and straight from ten metres out, diving in low for a deserved try. Wood's conversion left Hornets flattered at 18-8.
The general consensus amongst Hornets' supporters was that it looked like the same old rubbish we've been used to for quite a few years. There was no discernible game plan on attack or defence and to say that this side might take a while to gel is more kindness than they really deserve.
If Martin Hall really fancied the challenge - he's got one.