Macrae’s late cover tackle secures Henley Hawks share of spoils

A SUPERB second half rearguard effort from Henley Hawks saw them share the spoils at Dorking on Saturday in an entertaining National Division 2 East 13-13 draw at The Big Field.

Despite the Hawks building an eight point lead at half time, Dorking rallied in the second period and will be disappointed not to have come away with the win.

However, the Hawks were good value for the points, particularly in the first half, and will take a lot of confidence from their performance heading into this Saturday’s game against league leaders Old Albanian at Dry Leas.

With the weather set fair at kick-off, the pitch had taken a significant amount of rain during the week which made it very boggy in places. This had an impact on the match and made it harder to play an expansive game.

As such, both sides struggled to find a foothold in the early exchanges with mistakes littering the contest. However, it was the Hawks who looked the more threatening, and were close to an opening score following a break from George Wood which put them deep within the Dorking 22. Frustratingly for the Hawks, a knock-on with the try line beckoning relieved the pressure for the home side.

Undeterred, Henley kept working hard and a penalty on 12-minutes gave Max Titchener a chance to open his account. The Henley flay half, who was impressive throughout the game, didn’t need a second chance and his well-struck kick from close to the halfway line put the Hawks into a 3-0 lead.

This spurred Dorking into life, and they scored the first try of the game just a few minutes later when the ever-present Tom Howe was put into space out wide and he finished well in the corner. Tom Hardwick was wide with the difficult conversion attempt, but the home side had nudged themselves into a 5-3 lead.

Henley kept finding gaps in the Dorking defence and were quickly back on the attack. This was helped by poor discipline from the Surrey side who had flanker Chris Bird yellow carded for another infringement at a ruck.

The Hawks made their numerical advantage count on the half hour mark when a clever kick over the top by Leo Webb was excellently gathered by Seb Scott who was the first to dot down. With Titchener adding the extras, Henley had their noses back in front at 10-5.

The game became fragmented, not helped by Dorking suffering a couple of nasty looking injuries which saw them having to empty their bench. Henley took advantage of the disjointed nature of the contest with another Titchener penalty just before the half-time whistle which gave the Hawks a 13-5 lead.

There would have undoubtedly been some harsh words in the Dorking changing room during the interval and whatever was said had the desired effect, as it was a different looking home side in the second period.

Despite some early pressure in the Dorking half, the rest of the game saw Henley having to deal with wave after wave of pressure from the home side. They finally made this pressure count with a penalty from Hardwick close to the hour mark which made it a one score game at 13-8 to Henley.

And when Hawks second row Liam Goodison was sent to the sin bin a few minutes later, the home side levelled the scores from the resulting line-out when replacement prop Callum Watson was the man to dot down following a powerful driving maul. Crucially, however, Hardwick missed the conversion which would have given Dorking the lead.

With 15 minutes still left to play, the game was finely balanced. However, with the home side still in the ascendency, you would be forgiven for thinking there was a horrible inevitability about it. But to their credit, Henley worked incredibly hard to keep Dorking out. The Hawks defensive line-out in particular was excellent, stopping any advantage the home side had built.

With the clock in the red, Dorking had one last chance to steal the points, but a fantastic cover tackle from Morgan Macrae stopped Howe from crossing the whitewash. This seemed to spark a melee between the two sets of players, which saw Howe given a straight red for a headbutt on Oscar White. However, more importantly, the referee blew the fulltime whistle and Luke Allen’s side came away with a hard fought two points for their efforts.

Henley Hawks: 15 Wood, 14 Scott, 13 Jones, 12. Leach, 11 Gordon, 10 Titchener, 9 Webb, 1 Fakatou, 2 Hayhow, 3 Adablah, 4 Goodison, 5 Elsey, 6 Basil, 7 S White, 8 Lunnon. Replacements: 16 Shpylka, 17 Kinniburgh, 18 Benning, 19 O White, 20 Macrae.