Sharks chew Chew

Sharks came up against a large physical Chew side on Sunday who asked many questions of the Sharks pack.

Chew enjoyed most of the territory and possession in the first half and it was almost disbelief that they turned round 28 - 10 down. This was due to the linespeed of the Sharks backline in defence, well led by James Copeland. This resulted in 3 interception tries, 2 for Josh Adams and one for Jamie Whitfield, all of which were well finished, plus another strong run from Josh.

As Chew only had 12 players, some of the Sharks pulled on a Chew shirt to help them out. One of them, Toby Baxter playing out of position in the centre, managed to make a great line break and then with the line beckoning contrived to fall over with no-one near him, causing a certain amount of laughter in the Sharks ranks.

Direct words were said at half time and as a result, the Sharks pack with Ben Anstead, Kearney Day, Nathan Carey, James Grindle, Ben Ingle and Josh Connock to the fore, started to gain parity with possession. This allowed half backs Baxter and Ed Moss to dictate in which parts of the pitch Sharks played and timely line interventions by full back Noah Holmes Macadam enabled the strong running Adams to cross for two more tries along with well supported tries by Moss and Connock. Ed had a good kicking return, landing 5 from 8.

Special mention should be made to those players who helped Chew out with numbers, namely, Toby, Oli Povey, Sam Edwards, Ryan Perch, Hadley Stevenson O'Shea and Sam Thomas.

All in all this was a good performance and showed the pace and power in the Sharks backline, but there is still plenty to work on and learn.

Sharks scorers
Tries: Josh Adams 5, Jamie Whitfield, Ed Moss, Josh Connock
Conversions: Ed Moss 5