The centrepiece of this year’s Roses Tournament, the Rugby 1st XV’s clash at York City Knights’ Huntington stadium, ended in a brilliant victory for UYRUFC, as well as proving a great success as the brainchild of York Sport President Sam Asfahani. Tom Buuge’s mercurial performance shone brightest of any, but the entire team came through with flying colours in the pressure-cooker environment to post a runaway victory; the backs’ second half performance was perhaps the 1sts’ best period of play of the entire season, since they simply tore Lancaster to shreds.
York didn’t have it all their own way in the first half. Indeed, Lancaster took the lead with an predatory try in the corner after the two sides had traded penalties, making it 8-3 to the visitors. York, stung, roared back on the stroke of half-time with a pick and drive try in the far corner of the field from George Wissen. After a very difficult conversion chance from James Mortimer snuck just wide, York went into the break at 8-8.
The game, however, was to resemble England’s well-known match against South Africa at the 2003 World Cup, namely that after relative parity one side pulled away after half-time. Tries throughout the half led to York storming to a 30-8 victory, with Tom Bugge’s jinking heroics prompting Sam Asfahani to bellow his undying love for the York scrum-half. York close the deficit in Roses to 15.5 -21.5 going into Super Saturday, and will have provided all of York’s sportsmen and women with a massive boost heading into the most important day of the competition.
Full report plus comment and analysis in the official York Vision Roses supplement, out this coming Tuesday.