Match Report: Diss vs Ely Tigers

Ely Tigers travelled to Diss looking to continue their recent run of wins.

The squad once more saw changes from the previous week, which may have explained the slow start by Tigers and it was against the run of play that Tigers take a lead, as Ely break, from a scrum deep in their own half, moving the ball left to right finding space allowing Mark Assenti to break only a last ditch tackle with the try line in sight, stop Assenti from scoring, but Tigers keep the ball alive finding Matt McCarthy to score, Jake Alsop adds the conversion (0-7)

Diss go down to 14 after a yellow for a number high tackles, from the resulting penalty Ely get their second try of the afternoon as Jordan Barnes scores, again Alsop was able to add the conversion (0-14)

Diss get on the score sheet with a try in the corner, going over unmarked as Tigers seemed to have stopped waiting for the referee to bring back play, but the try stood, unable to add the conversion (5-14) 

Tigers regain the gap with with McCarthy going over to score his second try of the afternoon, Alsop adds the conversion on the stroke off half time to give Tigers a healthy lead at the break (5-21)

The start of the second half saw yet more rain fall on the heavy pitch, the game started to get disjointed and wasn’t helped when Diss went down to 14 men after a red card, having watch Tigers all season could this be the time that they kicked on and piled on the points, coach Buzz Coulson looked to the bench bringing on Ricky Neale and Lee Thompson, soon to follow was Adam Tallack, despite being a man down the home side were pushing Ely back with the game mostly being played in their half, the home side went down to 13 as the referee produced another card.   

Despite being down to 13 it was the home side that looked likely to score, and they did, from an Ely line out the home side picked up the ball and attacked skipping tackles to cross the try line (10-21), conversion was missed, despite the home side being down on numbers they were still talking about getting the two tries required for the bonus point from the game

A charged down kick by Tallack saw Ely score their bonus point try, Tallack beat the defender to the ball and run free to set up McCarthy for his hat trick try, aswell as the Bonus point try, under the posts, with Alsop adding the conversion (10-28)

The try was a blow for the home side so it was no surprise with the game coming to a close that Ely scored again as Barnes adding his second try, with Alsop adding the conversion (10-35) as Tigers made the extra players count, as Jordan soon added another try inside the last five minutes, as Ely finally made the man different count, as captain Lory Martin was able to cross the line to score during the last play of the game, with Alsop able to add the conversion as the full time whistle blew with the final score finished (10-42)

The win moved Tigers up to 4th place on 65 points, just one point behind 3rd place Ipswich.

Press release from Ely Tigers Rugby Club

Photo credit: Steve Wells