Leeds Carnegie 24 Bedford Blues 24: Leeds are left to rue their errant decision-making

A draw against unbeaten pool leaders Bedford, while creditable and the least they deserved for an enterprising performance, was not enough to significantly boost their hopes of booking a return to the Premiership.

Diccon Edwards’s side are now at the stage where they need favours from the other teams in Pool B to reach the semi-finals. Otherwise they face a second consecutive season outside the top flight for the first time since the turn of the millennium.

With a seven-figure debt and parachute payments reducing next season, it could be a worrying summer for the club.

Of more immediate concern is the inability to win games when the entire regular season has been about building towards this most pivotal stage of the season.

They showed attacking guile yesterday, but that was outweighed by poor defending in an enjoyable contest that was on a knife-edge throughout.

Edwards has assembled a young, adventurous team, but one which lacks leaders.

What he would give for the kind of leadership group Stuart Lancaster has assembled with England; the interim head coach was among the 1,782 crowd yesterday.

The former Leeds director of rugby will learn this week whether he is the RFU’s choice to lead England on a full-time basis.

Lancaster wants a positive, swift decision; Edwards just wants players who have the courage of their convictions.

“It was an afternoon of frustration, we should have had that game won,” said Edwards.

“We made decisions that in the cold light of day we wouldn’t have made. They were panicking out there.

“It’s not necessarily the decisions but the execution after that.

“We need to win three games now. We’re capable of it, but we’ll not look any further than Bedford away next Saturday.

“But there’s no margin for error now for us.”

The decision-making that irked Edwards so much was captain Andy Titterrell’s direction to ignore the chance of three easy points in favour of a scrum as they looked to build on a 21-14 second-half lead.

Joe Ford also attempted a penalty from all of 60 metres to try to win it late on when he perhaps should have kicked to touch.

Aside from the mental lapses, it was an enjoyable game contested by two sides relishing the chance to express themselves with ball in hand.

In such circumstances it was a surprise that the first half produced no tries.

Ford kicked three of his four penalty attempts compared to the 100 per cent accuracy of James Pritchard, who booted all three of his to send the two teams down the tunnel on level terms.

Leeds’s inability to find the killer pass or intervention, either from a lineout they dominated or in the loose, was symptomatic of a first half where they struggled to turn territory into points.

However, that failure was remedied seconds into the second half when Leeds turned over the ball deep inside Bedford’s 22.

Initial thrusts from Will Cliff and Jacob Rowan were repelled before Sean Hohneck – on his return from injury – broke the resistance in the corner.

Ford missed the conversion and Leeds’s advantage was shortlived as Bedford responded swiftly, Brendan Burke lofting a pass to the right wing for Ollie Dodge to touch down.

Tries were flowing all of a sudden as within minutes of parity being restored, Leeds went ahead again as Jordan Davies blocked Dodge’s clearance kick and touched down as the ball span back kindly in the in-goal area.

The conversion was much easier this time for Ford, who had Leeds moving again when he found touch with a penalty.

That set up a spell of sustained pressure on the Bedford line as the Yorkshire side strived to build a two-score lead.

The 22-year-old fly-half came closest to doing that with a drop-goal from 25m that hit an upright.

He then declined the chance to kick a penalty to allow the green-shirted scrum to keep grinding down Bedford, a ploy that backfired when the visitors first turned the ball over in the scrum, and then in the loose.

The punishment was complete when the Blues’ diminutive centre Brendan Burke evaded three tackles in a slalom-like run through the middle that was finished off by the supporting Pritchard, whose conversion levelled the scores with 14 minutes remaining.

Ford re-established Leeds’s advantage with a cleanly-struck 30m drop-goal which was swiftly cancelled out by a touchline penalty from Jake Sharp.

Ford then tried to snatch it with that ambitious kick from inside his own half that dropped agonisingly short, when he perhaps should have kicked for touch to at least wind the clock down. The remaining 90 seconds could have proved crucial but Iain Thornley made a brilliant, last-ditch tackle to deny Josh Bassett a try.

Leeds Carnegie: McColl, Blackett, Thornley, S Barrow (Davies 20), Lucock, Ford, Cliff; Aulika (Lockwood 60), Titterrell (Nilsen 66), Young (Mustafa 56), Beck, Hohneck (Hemingway 66), Williamson (D Barrow 66), Rowan, Burrows. Unused replacements: Shaw.

Bedford Blues: Pritchard, Dodge, Burke, Vass (Schmidt 66), Bassett, Lennard (Sharp 57), Veenendaal (Baldwin 57); Walsh, Locke (Cochrane 54), Cooper (Reeves 54), Tupai (Howard 57), Rae, Fisher, Harding (Fox 57), Barrell.

Referee: D Pearson (RFU).