Cougars: Hornets feel the heat

From the Telegraph & Argus, first published Friday 21st Jun 2002.

Cugars 21 - Rochdale 32 - Cougars continued to impress against the leading teams but again failed to show that killer instinct to finish off after dominating.

They are improving week on week and in half a season Moorby and Moses have turned them from a shapeless undisciplined rabble to a team that can now compete. But the next step is the biggest and that is from just competing to actually winning games just like this one.

A lot of it comes down to concentration and intensity, both the last two games were lost on errors. Here the errors were less obvious, but equally as crucial, two of the last four Rochdale tries came from failed interception attempts. Instead of glory they produced disaster.

To be fair though the Hornets team was much bigger and more experienced and always looked likely to step up a gear if pushed. And that's exactly what happened. Four tries in the last twenty minutes gave them a victory they barely deserved but always looked capable of achieving.

There was a glorious chance of an interception in the 57th minute, and it was too much for Ollie Marns to resist. He just failed to hang on and the chance was gone. That would have given the Cougars an 11-point lead that might just have been enough. Instead from the resultant scrum James Bunyan forced his way over in the corner, and the Cougars suddenly led by just a point.

That was never going to be enough. And so it proved. Hornets turned on fifteen minutes of power to make sure of victory running through a visibly wilting Cougars defence. Those tries came from Brendan O'Meara, Richard Pachniuk and Danny Wood who finished with a personal tally of 16 points, adding six goals.

The first half saw the Cougars look by far the better side. they scored two tries to one and deserved to have a bigger lead than their 9-8 lead gave them.

Skipper James Rushforth certainly looked back to his best and opened the scoring in the 16th minute after a great break from Simeon Hoyle. Rushforth looked held on the line but somehow snaked out an arm to reach down and score.

With Adam Mitchell on the bench Danny Fearon went for goal and failed.

Hornets led briefly when ex Bull Matt Calland burst over, Wood converting then adding a penalty to make it 8-4.

Keighley soon got back on track. More Hoyle yardage saw a great combination of passes under pressure on the Hornets line from Fearon and Matty Firth put Danny Ekis over. This time Rushforth missed the easy kick and the Cougars only regained the lead when Firth landed a simple short-range drop goal in the 37th minute.

The second half saw the Cougars start on top . Wood landed another penalty to make it 10-9 before more great play from Hoyle, this time with the returning Phil Stephenson, set up Rushforth's second try, a smart inside pass from Firth sending his captain across the Hornets line before he found the gap that he could race through. Adam Mitchell, on at the break for the injured Chris Wainwright, landed the conversion and things looked good at 15-10.

the Cougars looked tired, and would have struggled to defend any lead, as it proved. Hornets went onto complete a victory that keeps them in second spot, the Cougars just had another painful if promising rugby league lesson.

They did get a late consolation effort in the dying seconds, probably one of the oddest tries scored at Cougar Park for a year or two, Fearon strolling and dummying his way across then through a watching hornets line, Mitchell converted as the hooter blew time, giving the losing margin a bit of respectability which was the least they deserved.

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