A Rotherham Titans XV ran out worthy winners over a youthful Leeds Tykes XV on a mild autumnal evening at Clifton Lane under the lights.
Titans outscored their Yorkshire rivals by 9 tries to 4 with dot downs coming via a brace from Oliver Fretwell and one each for Cuchulain Livingstone, Joji Logavatu, Alastair Donkor, Travis Gideon, Tainne Finn, Will Wood and Zach Toerien, with Corben Ollivent adding 12 points from the tee.
Whilst it’s always important to get the win, the match was also intended to give lads who haven’t played a lot in a Roth shirt some valuable game time. And the match allowed Rotherham to tick both of those boxes.
Fair play to Leeds too; they had lots of University players in their ranks and they all contributed to a great game of rugby.
Indeed, Leeds raced into a 14-0 lead inside the opening 10 minutes with some bright and enterprising play through their backline.
However, as the Titans started to settle, their more experienced players began to exert some control into the game, which in turn led to four first half tries.
The game was effectively won early in the second half when Rotherham added their firth score.
However, both sides continued to play some neat rugby which made it an entertaining spectacle for the supporters, as Titans added a further four tries to Leeds two.
Speaking after the game Titans Assistant Coach, Matt Smith, reflected:
“We are really happy with how things went tonight; some of the lads have had some invaluable minutes in a Roth shirt and that will set them up nicely.
“It was good to see what we’ve been doing in training working out well in a game. I know Leeds had some young lads out there, but it’s great to be able to do something like this.
“To get two great Yorkshire clubs playing against each other in these circumstances is brilliant, but as always it’s still nice to get the win.
“I was really happy with our set piece, Harry Gilson-Fox has been out for about 3 months through injury and he called the line out really well and he looked very composed.
“We spoke to the forwards and said we didn’t want to see a change between what we do on a Saturday and what we do tonight and fair play to them I don’t think we did.
“We mauled well and scored some good tries off our maul and I thought overall as a team the control was there.
“I thought Corben Ollivent was brilliant tonight, he stuck to the game plan and we played the game in the right areas and we ultimately squeezed Leeds.”
Referee: Daniel Woods
Assistant Referee’s: Tom Hurdley & Jaffel Versi
Rotherham Titans: 15 Cuchulain Livingstone, 14 Tainne Finn, 13 Will Wood, 12 Corben Ollivent (c), 11 Travis Gideon, 10 Charlie Metcalf, 9 James Naylor, 1 Zach Toerien, 2 Oliver Fretwell, 3 Rikki Stout, 4 Harry Gilson-Fox, 5 Callum Russell, 6 Lewis Allan, 7 Ben Copley, 8 Joji Logavatu.
Replacements: Loma Kivalu, Alastair Donkor, Jake Abram.
