Ilkeston 17 - Bingham 44

Bingham travelled to Ilkeston on Saturday welcoming back Glenn Sutton after a tour of duty with the RAF at full back and a new face on the bench Alex Jones. Bingham won the toss and chose to play up the slope, and straight away showed their intentions by running back at their opponents through Lee Stokoe who fed the backs and immediately were in the Ilkeston 22, but a good lineout won by Ilkeston allowed them to relieve the pressure. Bingham immediately showed they were not to be out muscled by the bigger Ilkeston pack and, from a lineout on our own 10 yard line Ben Mcgill won a clean take and the Bingham pack drove the Ilkeston 8 back 25 meters. The 1st score was not long in coming through great 1st phase lineout ball, the backs recycling the ball quickly with the ball finding its way to Lee Stokoe again and he crashed over, Paul Foster converted.

Ilkeston replied putting pressure on the Bingham forwards and after an unnecessary penalty the Ilkeston 10 kicked the ball deep into the Bingham 22 and after the resulting lineout and numerous drives the scrum half squeezed over for an unconverted try.

Despite some excellent rugby with both sides trying to move the ball, there was no further score until the stroke of half time, when Ilkeston had the put in to a scrum and Dave Fairchild took a strike against the head. Playing at 8 this week, Jonathan Thomas was quick to pick up and advance forward and with the Ilkeston back row still pushing in the scrum chipped down field, he and Ben John pressurised the winger and Jonathan picked up and strode over for an unconverted try. Half time 5 – 12.

Now with the slope Bingham kicked off deep into the Ilkeston 22 they managed to clear but Bingham quickly were in the ascendancy. A 4 man line out in the opposition 22 provided Anthony Thomas with quick clean possession to crash over only for the conversion to be missed. Straight from the kick off Paul Foster kicked deep into the Ilkeston 22 and from good lineout ball Paul stepped inside the opposition 10 and fed Anthony Thomas for his second try, again the conversion was missed. In a period of 10 minutes either side of half time, Bingham had scored 3 unanswered tries.

Ilkeston did not give up however and after a 10 minute period of sustained pressure their 10 went over for a converted try. Bingham were looking a bit shaky at this point but immediately went on the attack and from another lineout Ben John stepped and pirouetted his way through for a try followed by another try for Chris Spibey after Gareth McCann had cleaned up some untidy lineout ball and driven forward.

By now Bingham were in free flow chasing the 2nd try bonus point, a number of changes were made; Keith Lowthian and Alex came on and the Bingham backs provided more exiting running rugby spreading the ball wide to Ian Taylor who caught the ball one handed, slipped his winger and duly swerved the full back to score in the corner.

Ilkeston heads were now hanging and straight from the kick off the ball was moved to Andrew Brizineks who ran in from 60 metres to score under the posts, and at last a try was converted, by Glenn Sutton. Further changes saw Joe Fisher and Mark Brenton enter the match. Ilkeston had the final say of the match with their right wing scoring wide out on the final whistle.

Final score 17 – 44 a great result form a young Bingham side which should cement our position in the league although we have not been able to rearrange our cancelled game against Kesteven and have only Worksop away as our last game of the season.