Rugby: Seaham turn on the style in success against Yarm

Seaham (red) spread the play in the recent defeat to South Shields

Yarm’s strong start was marred by a possible knee ligament injury sustained by their No 8 and Seaham capitalised, scoring a brilliant try when a set piece from the back of the scrum got good ball to fly-half Scott Patterson.

He put Glen Hardie into the gap and he ran 30 metres before offloading to winger Pete Madden, who crashed over from close range.

Seaham’s excellent, disciplined play was rewarded when the outstanding Grant Dixon barged over from close range, with Hardie adding a conversion for a 12-0 interval lead.

Seaham showed their Jekyll and Hyde personality in the second half, as Yarm hit back with two quick, unconverted tries to cut the deficit to two points.

But Seaham rallied and and the pendulum of momentum swung again. Kurt Miller carried the ball into contact, Chris Bland maintained the charge and offloaded to Madden, who again ran a nice supporting line and touched down to make it 17-10.

Yarm responded by levelling with a converted try, but Seaham stayed strong and immediately got to work again, and their pressure led to Chris Bland scoring, crashing over from close range.

The Harbour men put the game to bed with the final play, Miller crashing over and Hardie converting.

Seaham produced the good, the bad and the ugly with some stand-out performances.

Maddem,on the wing, produced an industrious performance, looking for the ball at every opportunity and was rewarded with the man of the match award and two tries.

Elliott Pratt, at scrum-half, produced an excellent performance, with some great defensive work when Seaham were under the cosh, and some brilliant box kicking released the pressure on the Seaham try line at times.

Bland looked back to his best and Nathan Rich, new to rugby, put in a brilliant performance on the wing and was unfortunate not to score.SeahamSeaham will field a second team for the first time in a while next weekend.

The club are always looking for new players. A spokesman said: “If you have arms and legs and a pulse and fancy trying something new, men’s open age training is at Seaham Sports Club at 7pm Tuesdays and Thursdays and juniors and ladies train on Sundays.

“Please contact the club via the website or facebook if you fancy a runaround.”