Emerging Nomads egde southern derby with Castletown
EMERGING Nomads struck the first blow in the Shimmin Wilson Manx Bowl competition with victory over Castletown at a muddy Poulsom Park on Saturday.
Friday’s rain had left the playing surface soft and the persistent downpour throughout the match resulted in areas of the pitch reducing to a slick. As in the previous encounter between these two sides, Castletown started the brighter and once again were over the Nomads’ line within the first few minutes.
A series of quickly-taken penalties got Daryl Richards close enough to barge his way over. Sam Peel duly slotted the extras.
Town’s near-neighbours struck back quickly, however, when referee Darryn Thompson judged that Gerard Landels had beaten defending Tom Watterson to a kicked ball in the Castletown end-zone. Dave Edge successfully kicked the conversion, then shortly after added a penalty. The score remained at 7-10 when the time came to change ends.
Both teams were playing with a great deal of urgency and as the pitch worsened errors and penalties were rife. Castletown were able to use the ever-reliable boot of Peel, plus their dominance at the set piece to secure most of the territory. However, they seemed to lack the something extra needed to breach the Nomad defence. Finally, they drove their scrum over the line, with flanker Barry Irvine making the touchdown.
Their opponenets were not so easily deterred and advanced purposefully forwards.
Castletown then lost flanker Jim Green to the sin-bin. The home side found themselves being hammered on their line until Mike Craine forced his way over. At this point Nomads lost their third hooker of the day, this time to the sin-bin, meaning 10 minutes of uncontested scrums. The conversion attempt fell short.
Castletown took the restart quickly and their isolated full-back failed to release the ball. The resulting quick-tap was judged to have been taken too far from the mark, however, and it became a Nomads scrum. Uncontested, they were able to run it back the length of the pitch with Mike Williams the scorer of the converted try which gave Nomads the win 25-12.
