NORTH East Worcestershire Ravens played a friendly against Coventry Dragons A after being let down for a third time this season by opposition who cried off.
This time the culprits were Leicester Storm who were the scheduled visitors, so again Ravens collected the points from the postponed Midlands Premier Division fixture.
After numerous phone calls and social media attempts to organise a friendly, preferably on home soil, the best option available for Ravens was a trip to Old Coventrians RFC on Saturday to face the Dragons, where the visitors arrived with only 13 players as five became unavailable due to a later kick-off time of 4pm.
Dragons were the first to trouble the scoreboard as they scored two tries within ten minutes, the first of which came after Ravens were adjudged to have knocked-on as Liam Dunne forced his way over the try line after a lot of Ravens pressure, only to see the Dragons scamper up the field to score from the resulting scrum.
The second try came against the run of play with the Ravens in the ascendancy and following another debatable decision from the referee when he pulled up the Dragons for a high shot as Dave Swaysland had an open line and a certain try if the official had just allowed the advantage.
Unfortunately, from the resulting penalty, Ravens knocked the ball on and Dragons seized on this mistake to go up the field to score again.
Ravens scored when Charlie Robinson rampaged from over 20 metres out to score a try by the side of the post converted by Dave Wimbury.
After another shower both sides made handling errors with a slippy ball and it was another 15 minutes before either side threatened to score as defences stood strong.
An injury to Jamie ‘Rocky’ Thomas saw the Ravens a bit light and Dragons took advantage to score three further tries before Richard Whitehouse rolled back the years with a deserved try for the visitors just before half time as he jinked and swerved past several would-be tacklers to score a great try converted by Wimbury, leaving Ravens 28-12 down at the break.
Dragons started off the stronger of the two teams in the second half, scoring three tries to put the game to bed, but Ravens had the last word in a 48-16 defeat as Dave Pearson scored a try, from which the conversion went just wide.
This was a good effort from Ravens, for whom Ellis Wilkes had his best game in a Ravens shirt. Ravens should have a stronger squad to pick from for the return fixture this weekend at Kings Norton.
