09 August 2015

Rovers gained revenge for their shock defeat two weeks ago against Haven, who were blown away by eight unanswered tries before gaining some consolation with four late scores. Haven started well with Gore’s kicking giving them purchase near the home line, from where he combined with Aiye to send Ted Chapelhow over near the posts. This stirred Rovers into action though, Bussey’s superb offload to Steve Snitch created space for Alex Foster to force his way over. They continued to dominate with intelligent kicks from Moore and Cooke to pressurise the Haven line, and the inevitable happened when Baldwinson forced his way over after Moore’s neat pass. Cooke eased Moore through a gap near the line for Rovers to extend the gap to eight. Haven were stunned by four further tries inside ten minutes. First Moore’s speculative kick through bounced away from Haven full back Chris Taylor into the hands of the grateful Will Sharp who ran under the posts with glee, then Cooke matched the effort as his kick evaded Taylor for Jamie Cording to pick up and score. Moore took them into the break with his second try after Sykes picked up a loose ball, and three minutes into the second period Ian Hardman’s looped overhead pass put Kyran Johnson in at the corner. Ten minutes later Cooke dummied in front of the Haven posts then popped a neat short pass to Matt James on the charge to the line.

Rovers were 36 up and had the game virtually sealed up, but after Gore picked up a stray pass and raced 75 metres the consolation fight back was on. For fifteen minutes Haven defended the onslaught before registering two more touchdowns in a similar fashion. First Chapelhow raced onto Gore’s corkscrew fly hack after James Newton’s pass from dummy half went to ground, and then Gore picked up Sharp’s spill from his own bomb to send Taylor over. After the hooter sounded they spread the ball out wide in their own half  for Chamberlain to race over.