Nothing appears to be simple when it comes to constructing the events for a Stockport match. You just never know what is going to happen next. The highlight or should be lowlight this time was when after 25 minutes of the second half and with Stockport apparently in control the referee decided to award Darlington a bizarre penalty try to make the score 17-18. It certainly put us on the edges of our seats yet again.

We should wind the clock back 65 minutes just as the match day roller coaster was leaving the station. We looked as if we were still on the coach for the first 5 minutes of the game. Darlington started the quicker and camped themselves in our 22. We appeared have weathered the storm and were about to serve an eviction order on them when then executed a text book blindside move that allowed their left wing to stroll over for 5 points. 5-0. No conversion.

It was the customary application of a size 12 to the backside we needed and we went on the attack and only another four minutes had passed when we squared the scores. The ball was moved by the backs from the right to left and it arrived with Nick Wroe. Nick was left with one man to beat. Did I say Man…sorry I should have said ‘Brick Privy’ . We would later see that he ran a lot quicker than a brick privy but this first encounter would also show that he actually didn’t tackle as well as a brick privy. He went too high and Willow the Wisp Wroe gave him the slip and ran in to score. Steve Pearson was getting over an injury so it was left to James Drew to miss the extras!! 5-5

We then meandered our way through to the 38th minute of the half. In the intervening 27 minutes we probed, went up blind alleys, looked promising and hit brick walls in no particular order. With half time looming I was just thinking to myself that it would be nice to go into the break with our noses in front. The referee was evidently in agreement and gave Steve Pearson the chance to add a penalty to our total. 5-8.

Within 2 minutes of the resumption we had added to our lead. We attacked up the right hand side and with the homeside’s defence in disarray James Drew popped up just at the right moment and ran in for his 2nd try of the league campaign. 5-13.

Within 3 minutes attention had reverted back to the Nick Wroe – Brick privy confrontation. Nick had already given his opposite number a tackling lesson but this time he was given the slip by Darlington local boy Pedro Salashuri. 10-13

Darlington’s Loose head prop got a yellow card five minutes later. During his absence we increased our lead and Greg Newton played his part in it’s creation twice. First of all he was charging down his right wing and finding his path blocked he executed an inch perfect kick ahead. Which brought play to about 10 metres from the Darlington line. With a 6ft 9in guy jumping at 2 you might wonder why the homeside’s hooker got pinged for delaying his throw. We tapped the free kick and went though three phases and the ball came back from a ruck on the right side. The ball went to Steve Pearson and seeing the Darlington defence drawn over to the right he executed a delicate cross field kick for Greg to run onto and touch down. 10-18.

We should have gone from strength to strength but it quickly started to go very pear shaped. First came with the penalty try. My understanding was that a penalty try should be awarded if the referee believes that a clear try scoring opportunity has been prevented by the defending team's misconduct. All I know is that our referee must have a vivid imagine. Our friend, the oversized Darlington wing, is stopped 5 metres short of our line . A ruck ensues during which the referee judges that Mike Raven was deliberately slowed play down. We had other defenders in close attendance but there was a loud blast of the whistle. Yellow card for Mike and unfortunately the delay allowed the ref to conjure up an exciting finale. Penalty try and a conversion made it 17-18.

I’m still not sure what happen over the next ten minutes but when Mike Raven came back on with 5 minutes left we found our 20-18 behind, with a flanker, Rueben Harvey on the wing, and a scrum half in Richard Geary playing at flanker. Just for good measure we had another scrum half actually playing scrum half: Mike Raven. The strange thing is that the next 5 minutes we went mad. Craig Cooper went galloping straight through the Darlington defence and ploughed a straight furrow straight to the line. My reaction may have been a little extreme and my invitation for Craig to have my babies may not have taken certain anatomical problems into consideration. Steve Pearson added the extras and we were moving into time added on.

Darlington wearily trudged back to the half way line and little did they realise that they could have saved themselves the walk. 15 seconds later that were back under the posts. Peter Bredenkamp took the restart and just took off up the field and beat numerous tired tackling attempts. With the full back to beat he was alerted to the presence of John Wilson on his right. Peter’s pass was perfect and John ran the last 20 metres and launched himself at the line under the posts. A simple conversion for Steve Pearson and the score was 20-32.

We only had the final minutes of time added on or ’injury time’…..oh dear did I say injury time…well it was for James Dalton who went down with a knee injury on the run in to the final whistle.

A long journey. Two points….not pretty , but this is no beauty contest….