Report by Bill Marshall
KEIGHLEY’S head coach Ben Sowrey admitted that his team got their tactics wrong in suffering their first home defeat of the season in Counties One Yorkshire.
Despite having a dominant pack, third-placed Keighley went down 36-28 against fourth-placed Yarnbury in the only game played in the division after another chilly weekend.
Keighley led 7-3 early doors but trailed for the rest of the match, threatening to pinch the spoils when they were 29-28 behind with six minutes left, only for the visitors to seal the contest with a converted try in stoppage time.
Sowrey said: “It was a tough one to take and you never want to lose matches like that, but we let them impose their game on us too much instead of us doing it to them. We missed a lot of opportunities.
“The only positive was that we put ourselves in a position where we could have snatched it, but fair play to Yarnbury - they bested us. It is as simple as that.”
Sowrey added: “We also forced things a little bit too much and we struggled to identify our strengths early on - we were dominating the scrum and our maul was really good - and we should have old-schooled it and dragged them into a set-piece oriented game.
“We did that at times, but it was just a matter of keeping that consistency for the duration.
“When we were flinging the ball it gave them an easy-in to the game. Yarnbury played a very fast game with offloads and play-it-from-anywhere attitude and it bleeds into your game where we were mirroring them a bit where what we needed to do was impose our battleplan - to keep hold of the ball, build phases and break them down, and we didn’t execute on that.
“If we had got the try in that critical period with six minutes left I think that we would have closed the game out.
“We missed three points with a penalty and we missed a kick to touch from a penalty so it wasn’t just one thing. It was coulda, woulda, shoulda.”
As for what Keighley did well, Sowrey said: “The set-piece, which gave us our only foothold in the game, but we also adapted well to not having a recognised scrum half by making it more forward oriented with pick and gos, and we got a couple of tries out of it but you can only rely on that so much.”
Keighley were missing full back Alex Brown, who now only plays occasionally, from the home win the previous week over Harrogate Pythons, switching Alfie Seeley to full back and giving teenager Will Gaffney a debut in the centres.
The hosts included Sean Kelly alongside him, who finished the game strongly after coming out of retirement.
Sowrey added: “It was a tough day at the office, but at least we are not getting a backlog of fixtures as others will now have to slip in a couple of games.”
Yarnbury, who defeated Hullensians 48-38 at home the previous week, also on a Rugby 365 artificial pitch, kicked off towards the clubhouse as Keighley hosted the fourth-placed club in the league for the second successive week.
It didn’t take long for the home side to take the lead via a try by lock Ed Keighley in the fourth minute, fly half Fin Meegan adding the conversion, but back came Yarnbury, fly half Danny Pound missing a shot at goal in the eighth minute before succeeding with one three minutes later.
The visitors led in the 14th minute when Kelly shot out of the line in a bid to intercept, which helped give Yarnbury the space on the right for impressive full back Max Kennedy to score.
Pound missed the conversion, but they were over again three minutes later via Sam Yewdall.
Yarnbury then couldn’t capitalise on a Sam Puxley break in the 19th minute, but back came Keighley forcing a goal-line drop-out.
The visitors were the next to score, however, Kennedy bagging his second in the 26th minute from a Max Lee pass, Pound’s conversion stretching the margin to 22-7.
Keighley, making more errors than normal, desperately needed something before half-time and got it via a try by stand-in scrum half Lucas Uren in the 29th minute, Meegan improving that to make it 22-14.
Little of note then happened up to the interval, but Kennedy bagged his hat-trick try a minute into the second half and it was an opportunistic one, Pound converting for 29-14.
An excellent drive by prop Sam Booker almost led to flanker Jake Parkinson scoring a try three minutes later, but the home fans didn’t have to wait long for another try as Kelly’s strong run set up the position for left winger Sam Blakeley to score, Meegan’s curling conversion reducing the deficit to 29-21.
Then hooker Shaun Minikin was yellow carded by referee Harry Graham in the 56th minute for a team accumulation of high tackles, but they conceded no points while he was off.
In fact they scored 10 minutes later via Keighley’s second, Meegan adding the extras to make it a 29-28 game.
The home side now had a head of steam, good work by Uren almost giving Blakeley the chance to go over on the left with 10 minutes remaining, but then they failed to score, though they came perilously close, after good continuity in Yarnbury’s 22 - a setback which ultimately proved fatal.
Meegan hooked a penalty attempt wide during that period of dominance, winger Allan Ebbrell missed a penalty kick to touch and Yarnbury sealed it in stoppage time with a try by Sam Newby that was converted by Pound.
It was not the precursor to the club dinner that evening that Keighley wanted, but at least they picked up a four-try bonus point ahead of a match at Leodiensians next Saturday.
Yarnbury, meanwhile, displaced Keighley in third, and are now only five points behind second-placed Wath, albeit having played two games more.
Keighley, who have also played two games more, are fourth, two points further back.