Pilgrims Dig Deep

PARK HOUSE 9 CANTERBURY PILGRIMS 15

by Dan Gill

After a two week week lay-off the Pilgrims travelled to Park House for what is never an easy fixture. The opening exchanges underlined this with Park’s significantly heavier pack looking to exert pressure at scrum time, and the Pilgrims young and pacey backline spreading the ball at every opportunity. A torrential down pour just after kick off made handling more difficult and this played into Park’s hands as they sent their heavy runners at the Canterbury line. One of the Pilgrims strengths is their defence and this was underlined early on with a number of strong tackles, notably from centre Jordan Constant. Despite this, their over eagerness led to a number of offside penalties which the very capable Park House fly half punished with three goals to build a 9-0 lead. Some stern words from skipper Al Evans and a couple of personnel changes allowed the Pilgrims to finish the half on the front foot with Tom McMann uncharacteristically missing a simple shot at goal before adding a penalty to cut the deficit to six points.
Pilgrims started the second half brightly and after some solid running from the forwards, the backs clicked into gear with slick handling in poor conditions. This opened space and after a number of quick drives by the forwards, wingman Alfie Orris burst through to score an unconverted try. Just as Canterbury were gaining some momentum, a yellow card for scrum half Hector Valladares swung the initiative back in Park’s favour. They exerted pressure at the scrums, but the Pilgrims made up for this by being tenacious in defence and having the better of the lineout exchanges – debutant hooker Aiden Demery throwing well in the wet- which kept the game finely balanced until canterbury were restored to a full complement. This brought almost instant success after winger Max Campbell, who was exceptional under the high ball all day, plucked a ball out of the sky with one hand before releasing Orris and Owain Collins and Gus Lister finished a well worked move to score by the posts. With Will Hilton adding the extras Pilgrims took the lead. They soon found themselves on the back foot once again with numerous handling errors and a yellow card for repeated infringements to debutant prop Hristo Hristov. An earlier injury meant the Pilgrims couldn’t field a competent front row so for the final nine minutes of the game scrums were uncontested and under league rules the Pilgrims had to lose another man so were reduced to thirteen. Park House themselves went down to fourteen after a high tackle but despite their best efforts, dogged defending, typified by supporters man of the Match Aiden Demery, saw Pilgrims come away with a win that keeps them at the top of Counties Kent One.
The team return to action on Friday when they welcome local rivals Deal & Betteshanger to the MTG- Kick off 7:30pm.