Derby Day disaster for Leith

With pretty much perfect weather conditions and a packed sideline both teams took to the field for the eagerly anticipated derby between Leith and Trinity. After a number of successes in the past few outings against Trinity, the Leith squad were high on confidence but had an itiching feeling that Trinity would be doing everything to prevent another Leith win.

The game started with Leith putting on the early pressure and had an early chance to take the lead however Dannfald shanked the kick, leaving the scores at deadlock for the first 10 minutes. Trinity then started to build some pressure of their own as poor Leith discipline allowed the opponents to get some easy yardage and move up the park. Despite the defence holding strong it was only a matter of time and eventually the pressure took its toll and Trinity went 7 points up. However moments later Leith were able to respond via the Dannfald boot from 15ms out.

However Trinity were having more of a say in the game and were putting Leith under more and more pressure and were putting the homeside in their half and pulled penalty back to go ahead again. Once again Leith found themselves on the back foot, however managed to pull a try back in quite fortunate circumstances. Dannfald via some juggling managed to make an interception stick and this allowed Ben Wilkinson to race down the park and as the winger was catching him he was able to offload to Craig Williamson who ran in from the 22m. Dannfald struck the conversion and it was 10 a piece. Leith managed to see out the final few minutes of the first half despite going down to 14 men as Fraser Forsyth was sent to the Sin Bin after one to penalties at the ruck.

Leith’s ill discipline was catching up with them as during the start of the 2nd half, 3 soft penalties were conceded well within easy kicking range giving Trinity an easy 9 points and a position of comfort in the game. But Leith were starting to get back in the game and making some opportunities of their own, and after a period of pressure in the Trinity 22m area the ball was shipped out wide to Eoin Murphy who true a couple of defenders who then gave Dannfald the chance to go over the line from 15m out. He converted his own try to bring the game within 2 points of the opposition.

However this is where Leith’s challenge crumbled. Instead of kicking on from here and trying to put Trinity to the sword Leith relented to the continued pressure. 2 soft tries in relatively quick succession effectively put the game out of the reach of Leith before a last Trinity try was the last chance gone. Leith did try to the final whistle but to no avail and the game finished 17-40 in the favour of Trinity.

It was a deeply frustrating game where nothing really clicked for the home side. There is still alot of rugby to play in the remainder of the season and alot of work to be down over the next few weeks to finish the season on a high.

Tries - Williamson, Dannfald
Conv - Dannfald (2)
Pen - Dannfald
MOTM - Paterson