After losing a close encounter earlier in the season at Bishop, Redcar knew they would arrive with plenty of confidence and in a mind-set that they could potentially spoil Redcar promotion push.

On a lovely Spring afternoon by the seaside, with a decent crowd present, Redcar secured another bonus point victory to move them one step closer to promotion into Durham and Northumberland 1.
Redcar made three changes to their forwards from the previous weeks side that beat North Shields, with Michael Tucker, Ste Bryce and Ste Johnson replacing Joel Hadfield who drops to the bench and the unavailable Tom Fleming and James Toward, the back-line remained unchanged.

Redcar kicked off and it was clear from the outset Bishop were going to play a very direct game. Redcar managed to defend well and immediately won the ball back, Bishop greeted them with a brick wall of a defence which was screamed and celebrated by their much bigger forwards like winning a meat draw on the raffle. Redcar retained possession and quickly moved the ball wide, only for Jake Duddles to receive ball and man in the shape of Bishops hard hitting inside centre, Jake shook himself off reattached his arms, searched for his head and picked up his boots that had been blown off his feet with the impact and settled in to what would be another strong performance from a young man coming of age.

Bishop were running on adrenalin and continued celebrating every hit but it wasn’t too long before Redcar opened the scoring on 11-minutes, with Redcar attacking towards the clubhouse and stringing numerous phases together up the centre-field and lefthand-side, Bishops defence had been sucked-in leaving some room out wide, Richie Young’s accurate cross-field kick bounced kindly into the hands of Daniel Addison who dotted it down in the corner, conversion missed. (5-0).

Both sides made unforced errors in the build-up to half-time, and it was Bishop who scored next. A line-break with an overlap followed by an inaccurate pass from Redcar winger Craig Newlands saw the ball picked-up by Bishop who moved it to their right winger to score in the corner, conversion missed. (5-5).

In the final 5 minutes of the 1st half, Redcar scored two further tries through centre Bri Foreman and winger Daniel Addison, who made it a brace, adding one conversion giving Redcar a 17-5 lead at the interval.

Redcar used Half-Time to regroup and appreciate the efforts of a much bigger Bishop team who would surely run out of steam in the second half, this wasn’t the case and after just 2 minutes of the second half, another Redcar mistake lead to Bishop
scoring their second try of the game, which was converted. (17-12).

Redcar then started to play the style of the rugby that their coaching staff seemingly enjoyed, building phases, moving the ball and off-loading the ballbefore contact. This lead to a further 3 tries for Redcar in the next 14 minutes, with Craig Newlands, Daniel Addison (hat-trick) and Philip Dyball all crossing the whitewash. All converted by Daniel Addison (38-12).

On 61 minutes, Redcar No. 8 James Cochrane was shown a Yellow Card for repeat infringements from his side, and with Redcar down to 7 forwards, Bishop took advantage scoring 2 tries through their forwards. One a push-over from 5 metres out, which was celebrated by their very excitable No5 who must have thought they had secured promotion either that or he had won first place at the gurning Championships, the conversion was successful and the score made for a good game all round 38-24.
After a dressing down behind the posts from Player Coach Young, Redcar were to have the last laugh, with some fantastic rugby orchestrated by Richie Young at 10, Brian Foreman grabbed his second try of the game on the 78th minute, making the final scoreline
43-24 as the conversion attempt was missed.

After the match the players looked somewhat unhappy with a 7 try win riddled with uncharacteristic errors but were soon smiling again on hearing that our friends down the coast had travelled well to Ponteland and secured victory which gives Redcar a 10pt lead at the top of the table with four games remaining.
Stand out performers on the day came from both forwards and backs with Ste Johnson having an awesome second half and rightly winning Man of the Match to Richie Young who made Redcar click and moved Bishop around the field throughout, another solid performance from Bri Foreman at 12 not to mention the finishing of Daniel Addison.
Redcar have a free-week this Saturday, followed by away fixtures at Seaton
Carew and Whitley Bay Rockliffe, before their final home fixture of the 2016-17
campaign against Darlington on April 8 and the final trip up the A19 to Blyth on April 22nd