Rotherham Titans suffered a bad day at the office as they were well beaten 46-24 by Rosslyn Park at The Rock.
Rotherham were outscored by 7 tries to 3, with their dot downs coming from Connor Dever, Connor Field and Alex Dolly.
The defeat ends Titans unbeaten 5-match run and the South Yorkshire side will now look to bounce straight back against Birmingham Moseley at Clifton Lane on Saturday.
Titans slow start to the game didn’t help their cause and as the scoreboard pressure mounted Titans found it difficult to get their game going. As a result they went in at the break trailing 15-3 with just an Ellis Abrahams penalty to show for their efforts.
However, when scrum half Connor Dever touched down 2 minutes into the second half Rotherham’s hopes received a boost as with the conversion they reduced their arrears to 15-10
And again after conceding another Rosslyn Park try, a Connor Field converted try on 52 minutes saw Rotherham once more reduce their deficit to 5 points.
The South Yorkshire side couldn’t be criticised for their effort, but too many individual errors meant the home side were given too many opportunities to demonstrate what a good side they are.
On the hour mark former Bristol winger Charlie Amesbury ran through to extend the home side lead and when Titans’ Connor Field was rightly shown a yellow card by an eager James Clarke, the hosts ruthlessly scored two converted tries in his absence to seal the game.
Both sides scored late converted tries, but this was a game the Rotherham players will want to forget and put right as soon as possible.
Speaking after the match Titans head coach, Joe Barker, explained, “I’m very disappointed because we didn’t turn up in the first 30 minutes. I don’t know if we were over eager to do well but we need to take a good look at ourselves individually and as a team because we just weren’t at the races in the opening period.
“When you fall behind early that creates scoreboard pressure and that doesn’t help, but we kept giving them field position. We had boys switching off defensively on the inside and to be fair to Rosslyn Park they’ve got a good squad and they capitalised well on our mistakes.
“However, when we had the ball we put some really good phases together and we scored some outstanding tries and we showed glimpses of what a good side we can be. We also defended really well at times, but then we kept on making little errors and it was those errors that killed us and that just wasn’t good enough.”
Referee: James Clarke
Attendance: 695
Yellow Card: Field (Titans)
Titans: Dever (T), Field (T), Dolly (T), Abrahams (3C, P)
Rosslyn Park: Ellis (T), Gillanders (T), Hayhow (T), Amesbury (T), Marfo (T), Munro (T), Lound (T, 4C, P)
Titans: 15 Tom Allott (Dolly 49), 14 Dan Leake, 13 Harry Dunne (Allott 64), 12 Ellis Abrahams, 11 Connor Field, 10 Joe Barker, 9 Connor Dever (Poole 69), 1 Dan Richardson, 2 Ali Thomson (Bergmanas 62), 3 Will Dennis (Stout 62), 4 Conor Keys (Ure 64), 5 Jamie Ure (Smith-Wano 34), 6 Luis Ball, 7 Zak Poole (Frost 34), 8 Seb Nagle-Taylor (Capt.).
Replacements: 16 Jack Bergmanas, 17 Rikki Stout, 18 Kieran Frost, 19 Eru Smith-Wano, 20 Alex Dolly.
Rosslyn Park: 15 Harry Leonard, 14 Connor Hayhow (Marfo 49), 13 Oliver Grove, 12 Joe Munro, 11 Charlie Amesbury, 10 Greg Lound, 9 Jack Gash, 1 Maurice Nwakor-Nwanaebi (Wade 40), 2 Tom Vaughan-Edwards (Gibson 68), 3 Paul Doran-Jones (Maguire 40), 4 Jonathan Mills (Tizard 49), 5 Greg Gillanders, 6 Adam Frampton, 7 Arthur Ellis, 8 Henry Spencer.
Replacements: 16 Karl Gibson, 17 Stewart Maguire, 18 Alistair Wade, 19 Hugh Tizard, 20 Ben Marfo.
Photo courtesy of David E Whittam