Moseley 23 Doncaster Knights 9: Frustration grows for Griffiths as Knights fail to convert

IF Clive Griffiths thought the final whistle would end his torment at Billesley Common he was sadly mistaken as having been denied what could be a vital bonus point he temporarily lost his car keys too.
By The Newsroom
Published 4th Mar 2013, 08:44 BST

The Doncaster director of rugby had one of those days as his side started slowly, eventually threatened to catch Moseley but then got caught with a sucker-punch three minutes from time.

Trailing 16-9 with nearly quarter-of-an-hour remaining, the Knights looked set to turn their dominance of territory and possession into points. But a 77th-minute score from replacement Buster Lawrence denied the visitors their loss bonus and left Griffiths stumped.

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“It’s tough to take,” the Welshman admitted. “We showed we are equally as good as them and they have mugged us at the end and taken a valuable point off us in the bigger picture.

“We just didn’t finish. We had a lot of ball in their 22 but we missed golden opportunities.

“The intent to play is there, the structure and way we want to play the game is there as you can see – but we just didn’t finish.

“To be fair to them they put their bodies on the line and tackled us time and time again. There were a couple of poor decisions from ourselves – game-changing decisions as well.”

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Initially at least Moseley showed no such generosity, taking just 90 seconds for scrum-half Ryan Glynn to nip over from a ruck.

Glyn Hughes converted and landed two further penalties as Moseley somehow reached half-time with a 13-0 lead.

Knights emerged after the turnaround with a new resolve and Jamie Lennard kicked three penalties to Hughes’s one to narrow the deficit to seven points.

But a single missed tackle on utility forward Lawrence and the visitors had missed another opportunity to close the gap on second-bottom Jersey.

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At least the Moseley team manager finally did Griffiths a good turn by ending his half-hour search and a thoroughly depressing afternoon.

“It’s an amazing statistic that when you are down there you just don’t get the 50-50s,” added Griffiths.

Moseley: Thomas; Hunt S, King, Carter, Robinson B (Hunt B 77); Hughes (Davies 77), Glynn; Waller, Caves (Wilkes 37), Evans (Herriott 64), Lockley, Powell (Lawrence 60), Mason (Dickinson 68), Pons (Robinson O 68), Pienaar.

Doncaster Knights: Braid; Keating, Sharp (Mama 56), Luke, Lewis; Lennard, Bedford (Hallam 71); McGovern (Brown 62), Buckley, Cronin, Challinor, Parsons (Hoy 59), Kettle, Hafu (Sowery 73), Planchant (Boyde 56). Unused replacement: Bergmanus

Referee: D Gamage

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