This anticipated clash between the joint league leaders proved there wasn’t much between the sides. Despite losing Chris to injury in the warm up, the lads started brightly – moving the ball well and testing the Aldwinians defence with just a few handling errors stopping Kendal going ahead. The visitors put a couple of high balls up the wing that were well dealt with by Cam, but in the 12th minute Aldwinians made a breakthrough by clearing a long ball up the park, catching our lads out of position, though they missed the conversion. Just a couple of minutes later a penalty by Charlie got Kendal on the board.
The lads really started to play some good rugby - Harley made a break not long before Charlie found a gap and put Kendal ahead on the 17th minute, though didn’t add the extras. A couple of minutes later Harley made an excellent break from deep and looked like he was going to score, but was caught on the 5m line by a scrambling defence. However, the lads kept the pressure on, with Jack O and Riley making runs before the forwards put in some fine work on the Aldwinians line, ending in Freddie diving over from the back of a ruck on the 26th minute with Charlie knocking over the conversion. Soon after some more good play had Gus haring down the wing, but the visiting defence covered well. In the last minute of the half the visitors got their second try, which they converted to make it only a 5 point gap at the interval.
For the second half; Johnny, Ethan, Alex and Luke were introduced – Iddy went to 15 as Riley took a knock. Kendal started as they played much of the first half with Frank and Tom carrying hard before Harley went over inside the 2nd minute of the half to score under the posts. Charlie added the conversion to make the gap 12 points, but that was the end of the home scoring. The away team started to get over the gainline more often, finding the edges of our defence and frequently going to the front of the lineout to put us under pressure, which started to cause our penalty count to mount. Aldwinans scored converted tries in the 6th and 14th minutes of the half to lead 24-26 with plenty of time left. There was still some good stuff being played by our lads, with Johnny carrying well, Ethan throwing great darts and a good move getting the ball through the hands of Rhys, Iddy to Cam before a couple of offloads by Cam to Jack O and a reverse with Iddy got Jack O to about a yard out, but we couldn’t push over. A penalty almost on their line had Will taking the tap and go hard into a packed defence, but they held firm. A break by Aldwinians almost saw them go the length of the field, but great work by Charlie, Will and Luke stopped the try. With 9 mins to go, a penalty was kicked over to leave us 5 points behind. We only fashioned one other great chance which had Alex carry deep in their 22, followed by further good forwards work getting us to their line and Harley burrowing over under huge pressure from the defence only for the ref (who had a really good game) to call it short, which post game photos shows was actually over the line.

The lads will pick themselves up and target another league run to try and ensure the reverse fixture in Dec will be a league decider.