Carnegie 27 London Scottish 30: Unbeaten run ended at hands of relentless kicker

Hosting London Scottish as part of the Rugby World Cup festivities with the Scotland national team in town yesterday, Carnegie were locked at 27-27 until the dying moments when the hosts conceded a penalty which Peter Lydon duly slotted over for the winning score.

“The result has probably been coming,” accepted Yorkshire head coach Bryan Redpath, whose side had won their opening three games to top the Championship table.

“We haven’t performed as well as we would have liked for the last couple of weeks and today we came up against a good side and I will give Scottish a lot of credit they deserved the victory.”

It had been such a promising start for the hosts with James Fitzpatrick crossing with debutant fly-half Joel Hodgson converting and adding a penalty.

But then came the Scottish response and 17 unanswered points through a Drew Locke try and a Lydon score. The latter also converted both and added a penalty before Seb Stegmann was released to scamper away for his second try for Carnegie, a score that although going unconverted, helped reduce the deficit.

A second Lydon penalty made it a five-point advantage at the break in favour of the men from the capital but Carnegie hit back within four minutes of the restart when Charlie Beech was forced over for a converted score.

Again the pendulum swung though and this time it was Mark Bright, Scottish’s captain on his 100th appearance, who crossed with the faultless Lydon again converting to make it 
27-22 to the visitors.

Although they enjoyed the majority of possession in the second half Carnegie were unable to make the most of their chances with some errors hindering their momentum. Andy Forsyth gave the hosts a lifeline when he crashed over in the closing stages to level the scores but Harry Leonard was unable to convert. That’s when Lydon stepped up to show him how it is done.