Rotherham Titans suffered a disappointing 27-22 loss away to Hull Ionians on a sunny afternoon at Brantingham Park.
Sam Veall, Harry Dunne and Corben Ollivent all crossed the whitewash for Rotherham, with Lloyd Hayes adding 7 points from the tee.
However, despite leading 22-21 at the break Titans were unable to add to their tally despite dominating for much of the second half.
Having three players yellow carded in the second forty didn’t help the South Yorkshire sides cause and ultimately finishing the game with 13 players proved a bit too much to overcome.
Rotherham will look back on this one and wonder how the win slipped from their grasp following such a dominant second half display.
In truth, a number of handling errors and at times an unreliable line-out in crucial field positions meant Roth would pay the price for a bad day at the office.
Credit must also go out to Ionians; their ability to weather the Titans storm for a full 30 minutes in the second half enabled them to stay in the game, before going on to secure their first ever competitive victory over Rotherham.
The first half of this absorbing contest resembled a basketball game as each team took it in turn to score.
Inside the opening 10 minutes following a Sam Wilson try for the hosts Titans hit back through Sam Veall. The full back showed great vision and pace as he collected a pass around 35 metres out before dancing his way through the Hull defence to dot down next to the sticks.
Ionians on their next visit into the Roth 22 came away with points again when former Titans’ scrum half Sam Pocklington sniped over from close range.
However, a Lloyd Hayes penalty was quickly followed by his partner in the centres Harry Dunne, he scored out wide after a period of possession sucked in the Hull defence to leave an overlap to give Rotherham a 15-14 lead.
The lead lasted only a few minutes as the home side added a third try through winger Sam Wilson; but as in true basketball fashion Titans went down the other end of the pitch and regained the advantage when fly half Corben Ollivent showed good awareness to thread his way through the defence to score next to the posts.
Lloyd Hayes’ conversion ended the first half scoring and Roth went in for the half time oranges with a slender 22-21 advantage.
The second half was a bizarre 40 minutes of rugby and the game should have been put to bed by Roth following all the territory and possession they enjoyed deep inside the Hull half.
However, the home side weathered the Titans storm and came back to win the game following two Lewis Minikin penalties on 78 minutes and then 3 minutes into added time.
Titans will now lick their wounds and then get back on the training field and work even harder to put things right, starting with next week’s home game against Blaydon.
Speaking immediately after the game a disappointed Adam Byron said:
“We are devastated to have lost that one; we went in at half time in front and we came out for the second half confident we would go on to get the win.
“We knew we’d made some errors in the first half and we corrected those defensive errors, but with the ball in hand we weren’t just up to it and we weren’t good enough today.
“The pleasing thing in the first half is we dealt with things that were happening in the game. You can’t rely on half time talks to sort things out; we struggled with certain aspects in the first half and we dealt with them on the pitch, our leaders stepped up and we dealt with it.
“The frustration is the same thing happened in the second half and our attack looked poor at times and we made too many errors.”
Referee: Tim Allatt
Attendance: 353
Yellow Card: Denman, Hayes, Dunne (Titans)
Titans: Veall (T), Dunne (T), Ollivent (T), Hayes (2C, P)
Hull Ionians: Wilson (2T), Pocklington (T), Minikin (3C, 2P)
Titans: 15 Sam Veall, 21 George Tucker (Stout 46), 13 Lloyd Hayes, 12 Harry Dunne, 11 Jack Taylor, 10 Corben Ollivent, 9 Sam Boxhall, 1 Charlie Capps (Rylance 28) (Capps 60), 2 Jack Bergmanas (Inman 60), 3 Gareth Denman (Tucker 56) (Ramrattan 66), 4 Zak Poole (Capt.), 5 Theo Nwosu-Hope, 6 Rupert Kay (Bustin 56), 7 Lewis Wilson, 8 Callum Bustin (Payne 30).
Replacements: 16 Louis Inman, 27 Rikki Stout, 18 Danny Rylance, 19 Marcus Payne, 20 Kai Ramrattan.
Hull Ionians: 15 Jack Townend, 14 Sam Wilson, 13 Lewis Minikin, 12 Josh Britton, 11 Nathan Hill, 10 Ben Smith, 9 Sam Pocklington (Kirk 74), 1 Chris Morton (Bell 52), 2 Ben Stephenson, 3 Ben Bell (Laverick 35) (Morton 71), 4 Joe Makin, 5 Tyler Heelas (Campbell 52), 6 Allan Hudson (Thompson 55), 7 James Sanderson (Capt.) (Powell 69), 8 George Mewburn.
Replacements: 16 Dave Laverick, 17 Alex Campbell, 18 Declan Thompson, 25 Lucas Powell, 20 Charlie Kirk.
