Match report on the run — Cranbrook v. Barker by “Insight”
Barker 39 – Cranbrook 10
It was a pleasant cool afternoon with the threat of rain which fortunately didn’t occur.
Cranbrook opened the scoring with a penalty in the first few minutes to go head 3-0.
Barker returned the favor a few minutes later with a penalty of their own to even up the score
Overall I would say Cranbrook had done their homework their defensive structure and theire support play at the breakdowns were excellent, they probably had a lot more ball to play with in the first 20 minutes but could not break through Barker defense. If anything, Cranbrook tended to lose ground through multiple phases of play.
It took Barker 19 minutes to score their first try – from a set piece: 13 Dove ran straight over the advantage line, there was quick recycling, good ball play play by David sucking in the defense before offloading to Jones coming in to pick up excellently, one-handed, before going over for a try in the corner.
Cranbrook came back with more determination than they had started with spending the next ten minutes within a few metres of the Barker try line. The defensive pattern held strong with the full Barker XV having to put in a tremendous effort to hold Cranbrook out.
Later they were rewarded with a second set-piece try, similar to the first one.
The score at half time was Barker 15 – Cranbrook 3
The scoring in the second half was Barker 24 – 7, which resulted in a 39-10 win for Barker.
The players
Players that impressed from Cranbrook
6 Nick Makas, 5 Tully Borkowski, 4 Hugh Summerhayes
From Barker I would say it was a team effort
