Yet another “game of two halves”, in which Ripon grossly underestimated the commitment and passion of this week’s visitors, to concede a four try bonus point victory to the opposition in the first half and then blow them away in a 33 – 0 rout in the second.

In a twelve try bonanza, Ripon showed style and a cohesion that simply had to come after weeks of training and close games. With an increasingly solid forward platform, Ripon’s backs had pretty much free rein in the second half and showed both a pace and flair that the opposition couldn’t live with. The home scrum creaked on occasion, but produced a steady stream of useable ball, including one pushover try and the line out dominated throughout, with two tries resulting from clean catches and drives in from around 20 metres.

Questions still remain unanswered about Ripon’s defensive resilience and precision in clinically finishing games, but apart from a fiercely contended first half, in which a few other teams may have shut Ripon out completely, the second half performance was quite magical. Work in progress clearly, but with good numbers training, consistency of availability and the skills development opportunities opening up, the future can only look bright.

Ripon started the game poorly and allowed the students first touch from their own kick off. Some uncertainty under the perfectly hanging ball, allowed the Medics to regain their kick off and immediately put Ripon on the back foot. The pressure resulted in a penalty goal attempt for the visitors on the two-minute mark, which just went wide. Retaining possession from the drop out restart, the visitors were soon gifted a free kick for a minor infringement and after a quick tap, their Inside Centre darted through the midst of the Ripon pack for his first try and to open the scoring for the visitors. Unlucky with the conversion attempt, the Medics were however looking a lively prospect.

Adding insult to injury, the Medics reclaimed the second kick-off of the game and set up another attacking phase. Ripon however soon broke out and at seven minutes entered the visitors’ half with a purpose. From a penalty touch kick the catch and drive from the line out was only going one way and resulted in a touch down for skipper Adam Newcombe, with Richard Scull adding the conversion. Play evened out for the next few minutes and it took another line out on the Medics 22 metre line to give Ripon a further chance to exploit the catch and drive, this time with Pete Taylor touching down. Scull added the second of his seven conversions.

Again from the restart, the Medics reclaimed the kick off and immediately exploited the home confusion to hit back with a further try, this time with a successful conversion to narrow the score to 14 – 12. Ripon kicked deep to pile on the pressure, forcing the Medics to defend robustly. The Ripon line out was by this time starting to work so well that a steal from the visitors’ throw in, saw Tom Gilchrist set off on a 40 metre dash only to get held up short of the line. Retaining possession from the drop out, Ripon attacked through quick hands by Scull and Taylor to put Tom Newby in for Ripon’s third and final try of the half. Scull converted to extend the lead to 21 - 12.

For the final ten minutes of the half, the Medics really stepped up their game and used their pace to stretch Ripon in all directions. Their frantic attacks saw two further converted tries to take the half time score to 21 – 26 and gave Ripon much to think about in their team talk.

The second half saw a very different Ripon come out of the blocks. The scrum steadied to a rock solid platform, the defence squared up superbly and the restarts became a clinical execution of ball retention. The whole team to a man, stepped up and played their hearts out. They used pace, skill and ingenuity to run the Medics off the park and scored a further 33 points unanswered, through five further tries, four of which Scull converted.

In the sixth minute of the half, Ripon took a five metre scrum opportunity to flex the forwards’ muscles and shunted the students over their line for Harry Scurr to claim the pushover try. Pushing back immediately from the well-received restart, Stiddard broke clear to put “birthday boy” Euan Findlay away for an outrageous 50 metre run, in which he shrugged off all manner of attempts to stop him, to score between the posts for the first of his two tries.

At seventeen minutes, Ripon broke blind from a scrum through Scurr and Findlay, then switched open in a perfectly timed back move, to put Tim Tombling in for Ripon’s sixth try. This was followed up a few moments later when after some free running and excellent handling, Findlay scampered home for his second try of the afternoon.

Play then quietened down for a few minutes, with Ripon going through phases and the Medics defending stoutly and trying to counter attack boldly. The final nail in their coffin however, came at 34 minutes, when a blind side break by Scull put Matthew Taylor away, to conclude the scoring for Ripon and to put the game out of sight.

A good team performance and if the elements of uncertainty shown in the first half can be eliminated totally, this looks like a team to watch.

Next week, Ripon travel to Yorkshire Division One outfit Selby, with perhaps another higher division scalp to add, as well as a possible “four on the trot” wins and a place in the third round of the Yorkshire Shield Competition. All support welcome as usual. Team meet time to be advised, kick off will be 3.00pm