A new season kicked off for Beverley in Counties 2 Yorkshire A with a visit to Harrogate. With a host of new opponents in this league it was hard to assess the strength of the home side, and early exchanges were evenly balanced. Beverley conceded the opening try when Harrogate broke away from their 22. However, the Beavers have welcomed back a number of players from long term injury and one of these Jacob Baggs, showed his strength to crash over to get the score back to 5-7.
The early continuity in the forwards was impressive with Harry Bailey on his debut and Greg Whyley making a big impact, and as a result Dan Lee added a second try to extend the lead to 12-7. A fluid backs move then gave Zach Uduehi the chance to speed down the wing to extend the lead to 17-7. Rob Smith then joined the scorers by sharply exploiting a gap and darting through to score and converting to add the bonus point 24-7. At this point the young Harrogate team switched on and took advantage of some lax Beverley defence to score two quick tries before half time and pull the game back into the melting pot 24-21.
Beverley reacted sharply after the break, and set up the returning Jake Boardman for his first of the afternoon to make it 31-21. Shortly after Smith repeated his trick from earlier of catching the Harrogate defence napping again and darting over and converting for his second this stretched the lead to 38-21. A few nerves were then jangled as Harrogate secured their bonus point with a fourth try to pull the score back to 38-26.
From there on in though, the last quarter was all the visitors. Jacob Baggs added his second, and shortly after Callum Harvey bounded in from 30m out to take the Beavers past the half century 52-26. A nice moment thereafter as Jamie Maltas shrugged of three defenders to score on his debut making the score 57-26. The scoring was then rounded off as Jake Boardman strode over for his second to make the final score 64-26. A good start for the Beavers but there will probably be challenging matches to come.
Stephanie Hazell
