Broadstreet RFC

After easily beating local opposition in pre-season friendlies, Broadstreet were hoping to use Luton, traditionally one of the stronger sides in the league, as a benchmark to discover how well summer training had gone.  Broadstreet opened their return to National 3 Midlands with a narrow 30 points to 22 away victory over a competitive Luton side. With a mix of old and new faces Street showed glimpses of what supporters can look forward to throughout the season with the backs enjoying plenty of clean ball from a powerful street pack.

Street gave starts to new faces Taylor (6), Pratt (8), Schropfer (9), Chatwin (11) and Fielder (14) and had the better start and pressurised for the first ten minutes though never really threatened the Luton line, Luton and in their first threatening position crossed the line, second row Laurence Alden latching onto a break from his centre to collect the offload and score. (Luton 5 – Broadstreet 0).

New coach Tom Hoines Hoines will have been pleased with the street reaction to going down as they immediately worked their way back up the pitch. Ben Dawes continuing where he left off last season by smashing through the ruck fringes. Despite good forward pressure it was a back line move which broke the defence, centre Andy Skene running full tilt into the opposition fly-half who made little attempt to tackle allowing Skene to score under the posts. (Luton 5 - Broadstreet 7)

Full back Tom Stokes added a penalty after 20 miutes to increase the lead to five, but this was cancelled out by a brace with 5 minutes from Luton winger Aiden Kennedy which highlighted some defensive flaws in the ‘Street backline. (Luton 15 - Broadstreet 10)

Some quick feet from Jordan Simpson to break the initial defensive line allowed  Tom Stokes to prove he wasn’t just in the squad for his boot, scoring an excellent try by picking a wonderful line and out pacing the defence to beat the covering fullback, he strolled over to score close to the posts. The fact that he was picked not just for his kicking abilities was highlighted when he fluffed the easiest of conversions! (Luton 15-Broadstreet 15)

Half Time 15-15

The second half started tightly, with the advantage going to the street pack due to their well worked scrums and line outs. The first real incident of the second half was....the sin-binning of Vetran 2nd row  Ed ’70 minutes’ Simkiss, the referee apportioned the sinbinning for 'persistent involvement each time there were handbags between to two packs'  Though to his defence this was slighty unjust, although Ed was actually involved in an ‘altercation’ the referee was looking a completely different direction when it happened, and therefore must have guessed the culprit from the red marks and the Luton players finger pointing.

Street kept the pressure on during the 10 minutes in the bin for Simkiss thoughtfully keeping the ball in hand with strong running and support play.During one of these up field drives at the back of a rolling maul found Simon Morris controling the maul and able to score . Simkiss returned to the field just in time to watch Luton score their fourth try of the match, fullback Alex Sutherland was on the end of a well executed backs move which allowed him to breeze over the line untouched. (Luton 22-Broadstreet 20)

Broadstreet piled on the pressure for the last 15 minutes and Luton gave away a series of penalties which street squandered two opportunities to take an easy three points. During this period Simon Morris was judged to have knocked on when placing the ball for the try, following a powerful run splitting the Luton defence through the centre. Lutons persistent offending finally resulting in the  Num 8 Shaun ‘Screech’ Mahoney’s,  binning which should have earnt a yellow card much earlier than it did. This allowed Tom Stokes to slot his second penalty and take Broadstreet back into the lead. Just as the game was closing Broadstreet sealed the win and a 4 try bonus point after pressurising an excellent kick to the corner from evergreen fullback Andy 'Tetley' Tee, the Luton fullback took too long and the chasing wall of street defenders pushing up as a unit Lutons clearance kick charged down by Morris allowing Nick Thatcher to outpace the defence  to score his 7^th try this season (inc friendlies). 

Full Time 22-30

MotM

Ben Dawes, tireless and effective ball carrying

DotD

Ed had a great shout at this for getting sin binned