Ouch - that hurts

A final score of 10 - 7 to a very happy Market Drayton side doesnt really tell the full story of a game Aldridge could and should have won.

Playing with the elements in the first half , Aldridge just couldn't score, repeated infringements gave Market Drayton easy exits when it was looking like the "A's" would score. Market Drayton one venture into the Aldridge half resulted in an impressive long range penalty for their 10 to give them a 3-0 lead at half-time. By this time, Aldridge had already lost Adam Reed (Shoulder Injury), and had Harry Baldock (BacK), Josh Reynolds (hamstring) and Ben Eden (recovering from a very late hit) all struggling.

Reynolds lasted only 2 minutes of the second half before having to come off, and Baldock only 10 minutes. Again Aldridge pressured the Market Drayton try line expecting to score, and finally Lea Ross powered over from close range for a converted try. With Adam Butler in superb form and the set-piece dominate Aldridge dominated possession, but still stupid penalties followed allowing Market Drayton easy exits.

With just under 10 minutes to go, the referee missed (or chose to miss as he ws fed up of the consistent appealing from Aldridge) a knock on, and from the resulting phase Drayton scored (Converted) and Aldridge are chasing the game. The game ended with Aldridge again failing to convert when the key chance came begging with just a couple of minutes left on the clock. Game Over Market Drayton 10 Aldridge 7

Head Coach Jon Arch...

"Not good enough ! I am annoyed, we lost that game with our heads and our inability to control our discipline...It doesn't help when you lose 3 key players but we had enough quality on the pitch to win that game at a canter. The conditions were not great, but we forgot the patterns we have worked hard on developing. The scrum and line-out dominated all day, but there was simply not enough big busting ball carries and we reverted to lazy work in both attack and defence.

It wasn't a day for back play which is obviously one of our strengths, but i want to acknowledge the work put in by Adam Morris at full back, i thought he was excellent today. Brad Russell also had a fine game, he started on the wing, then moved to centre and finally 9 due to the injuries.

We are massively disappointed; we simply should have won today but we didn't fight hard enough for it. That said we go again on Tuesday night, we have a free week this weekend which hopefully will give Harry, Adam and Josh time to recover."