London squeeze home against Cumbria

London Broncos Academy playing again under the banner of London and the South, played their second fixture of the BARLA U18 Championship against Cumbria at Hillsborough Hawks in Sheffield.

A hard fought affair throughout saw London squeeze home to pick up their 1st victory of 2004.

The game was evenly balanced throughout with London power competing against the great Rugby League experience possessed by the Cumbrians.

London opened the scoring with a great try by Ade Adebisi after quick hands by Matt Oliver and Michael Williams put him in the corner. The Cumbrian team quickly replied which was to form the pattern for the 1st half.

Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook showed his growing reputation as a potential "Adrian Morley" with a furious display of tackling and devastating running which lead to 2 tries. However at Half time Cumbria were still a try in front.

The second half looked a big a challenge for London as Louie McCarthy and Iain Lane the two most experienced forwards could not continue due to injury and Dave McMeeken was having to play with a dead leg.

It looked that Cumbria might just hold onto their lead and even more so when Hooker John Sullivan was carried off with a serous looking rib injury, especially as he had looked exceptional at dummy half making over ? a dozen breaks.

Captain Mike Worrincy stepped up to take responsibility at dummy half - the 1st time he had ever played there.

London kept on battling and from a loose pass just 15m away from London's line by Cumbria, Matt King picked up and showed great composure to run 80m pursued by 3 would be tacklers before putting Steve Elms under the post to even up the game.

More drama was to follow as from a scrum 30m out Ade Adebisi ran a great line to score the winning try. London's defence held out for the next five minutes to claim an important victory.

Head Coach Phil Jones was delighted although realised there is still lots of work to do: "The main area I am pleased with is the players character last year they would have folded if a couple of the more experienced players had gone off injured.

Also the conditioning work by Oggie seems to have made our team much stronger and fitter."

I am pleased by lots of the individual player performances especially Louie, Ade and Mike Worrincy. We now need to improve our team skills over the next two weeks in time for the start of the Junior Academy season".

Team

Ade Adebisi (4T), Michael Williams, Matt King, Tony Clubb, Steve Elms (1T), Jack Malin, Matt Oliver, Louie McCarthy Scarsbrook (2T), John Sullivan, Dave McMeeken, Iain Lane, Jack Barber, Michael Worrincy Subs Dave Williams, Irvin Greenwood, Dave Montero, Ben Wadsworth, Rishi Ravalia, Junior Graham, Rajvi Ravalia