Salem need to show improvement

3:46pm Sunday 2nd November 2008

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Bradford Salem 22, Malton & Norton 10

Bradford Salem maintained their promotion push in Yorkshire Division One yesterday but were given a bit of a fright by bottom club Malton & Norton.

Malton centre Ian Cooke missed a couple of early opportunities to give his side the lead but his penalty attempts fell short of the target.

However, Salem fly half Jonny Robinson made no mistake with a penalty from 25 metres and the home side went 3-0 up against the run of play.

The scores were soon level when Cooke finally managed to put a penalty over and, with their tails up, the North Yorkshire club started to put Salem under pressure.

Nevertheless, the Heaton side weathered the storm and, but for a number of forced passes when in good positions, they should really have got themselves in front.

As it happened, neither side were able to break the deadlock before half-time.

In the second half, Salem did eventually breach the visitors' defence when centre Christian Bourne burst through for a fine individual try and Robinson kicked the simple conversion to give his side a 10-3 advantage.

However, Malton hit back with a converted try of their own to restore the balance at 10-10.

Hooker Sean Fields settled Salem nerves when he forced his way through some weak tackling to take the scoreline to 15-10.

Then captain and leading try-scorer Steve Cowman sealed victory with a well-taken try, improved by Robinson, to give a final score of 22-10.

It was a lacklustre and error-strewn performance from the Bradford side and they will definitely need to show an improvement if they are to threaten promotion contenders Sheffield at Abbeydale next week.