Rugby Run Rampant Against Northumbria

A dominant Loughborough ran rampant against league leaders Northumbria, cruising to an emphatic 52-0 win at home. Loughborough move above Northumbria in BUCS Premier North but still trail Leeds Beckett Carnegie by three points despite beating them 40-10 last week.

Loughborough wreaked havoc amongst the hopeless Northumbria defence as the away side’s basic skill seemed to disappear on a cold Loughborough evening. The visitors failed to string any sort of move together and this, added to their poor tackling, cost them dearly on the night.

The home side were on the front foot from the beginning, winning an early penalty at scrum-time, revealing ominous signs for Northumbria. Loughborough continued to apply the pressure and were rewarded with a penalty in the Northumbria half, only for Tom James to miss his first kick of the day.

Despite his early miss, James made the most of further Northumbria ill-discipline and took Loughborough into a six-point lead early in the first period.

Bar Bartlett was pulling the strings at stand-off with some pin-point tactical kicking and Northumbria struggled to gain any territorial foothold. Bartlett played a central role as Loughborough opened their try scoring account as he broke through the Northumbria line following some scrappy play and put in winger Sam Barnes as Loughborough leapt to a 13-0 lead.

Things went from bad to worse for Northumbria as James added another penalty before one of the visiting props found himself being sent to the sin bin for yet another scrum infringement.

Loughborough capped off the opening half in perfect style as David Buck picked up his own charge down near the half way line before evading several defenders to score in the left corner. James missed the difficult kick but Loughborough went into half-time with a seemingly unassailable 21-0 advantage.

The second half developed much in the same way as the first as Loughborough continued to dominate the visitors. Tom James’ opportunistic sniping run following a scrum against the head saw him touchdown from 20 metres out. The hosts continued to grow in confidence and the impressive Ollie Williams took the score to 35-0 as he dived over in the far left corner following a great kick chase from Sam Barnes.

Despite having only 13 men on the pitch at one point in the second half, Loughborough added further tries through Barnes, Carrol and MacPherson as the rout was completed in fine style.

Loughborough’s defence was fantastic throughout but it was still hard to see how Northumbria were leading the division going into today’s fixture.