Entertaining Wharfedale pipped at end

Despite needing to repel a last- minute siege with a man down, Blaydon emerged richly deserving winners of a game they dominated with the more incisive running.

Wharfedale opened confidently, claiming an early close-driven try by James Tyson converted by Tom Davidson. But this bright start was soon eclipsed by three tries from Blaydon who exploited Dale’s tendency to play too much rugby under their own posts.

Wharfedale were at last able to make a scoring impact in capitalising of overlapping yellow cards to score two converted tries. First Davidson put the finish to a series of short forward assaults to the line and fly-half Gray collected a kick ahead out of defence to race clear to close the gap to 25-21.

Jason Smithson restored Blaydon’s two-score lead before Steve Graham battered his way over to pull them to within four. But they were unable to repeat the trick.