Rotherham Titans Overcoming the irresistible force

As the sun sets on a magnificent season in National 2 North I would like to pay tribute to my beloved Rotherham Titans.

As far as seasons go it must be many years since there was such a battle royal such as the one that has taken place between two former giants of the game.

Leeds ended the season as they began, with a tight win over a resurgent Sheffield. As you know, Rotherham claimed the title at Billingham, having had the honour of being the first team to play the North Easterners in their first ever game in the National Leagues.

What happened in between was a titanic battle between two teams where no quarter was given.

Roth were winning their games comfortably whereas Leeds were despatching teams with aplomb, and their form looked more ominous the more the season went on. Roth to their credit, held their nerve.

In mid October Rotherham made the decision to part ways with Gary Pearce (who had guided Hull to promotion two seasons prior) and replaced him with Gareth Lewis and Harvey Biljon who was looking for another challenge following the unfortunate demise of Jersey, having masterminded their Championship title success the previous season. 

The mindset changed from trying to catch Leeds, to improving their own performances and following defeat by 6 points at Leeds in November, Roth embarked on a run of 15 straight bonus point wins which took them to the title by 2 points.

Yes, only two points. This tells you the quality of Leeds who themselves (games against Wharfedale, Fylde and ourselves aside) had been swatting teams for fun between games 2 and 25, and had become an “irresistible force” building up a mountain of points, both in terms of five pointers and points differential. 

It seemed that the two teams were getting the best out of each other. 

The first instance of fallability in Leeds came when they failed to get a bonus point at home to a tough Wharfedale team, yet they still kept marching on to storming wins, and there was definitely an envious doubt in my mind as to whether we could keep it up, and even if we did, would we ever catch them?

March 9th, a lousy day weatherwise I recall, presented Wharfedale again, this time on their own manor. Yet again they gave Leeds major problems, and early in the second half with a howling wind at their backs, Wharfedale actually led 8-7 and were on or near the Leeds line for large periods. Yet, even in this adversity, Leeds showed their character to get another try and ground out a 12-8 win to keep a firm grip on first place.

March 23rd enter the gladiators. Roth, 5 points behind Leeds going into the game, really needing a 5 point win and also stop Leeds from gaining anything. Yet another howling wind at Clifton Lane. Roth with the wind at their backs built up a 22-5 advantage but Leeds showed their metal in the second half and with seven or eight minutes remaining had got back to 27-26, which would seemingly, as a minimum give Leeds two losing bonus points, I say minimum because, at that stage Leeds looked odds on to find a winning score. However, they didn’t reckon with John Okafor, who scored a remarkable try to put Rotherham 32-26 ahead with just three minutes or so remaining. Unfortunately kicking into the wind meant that the conversion was missed and Leeds were still within 7, constantly attacking our line. A knock on, cue bedlam. Roth kicked it out having held on to win.

Like everyone else I thought it was a fabulous win but maybe those two Leeds bonus points might come back to haunt us.

Enter Fylde. By their own standards Fylde had had a very disappointing season, but regulars in this league know, that Fylde is an incredibly difficult place to get a result. We had held off a late rally by Fylde a few weeks prior to claim 32-27 bonus point win so we knew a switched on Fylde could give anyone a game. And so it proved. Fylde stopped the irresistible machine in its tracks and held on for an 18-15 win to hand Leeds their second defeat, and suddenly there was an opportunity. We had kept on winning and not worrying about Leeds. After all we couldn’t control their scores, so spent our energy on ourselves rather than worrying about other teams. Keep your head down and if an opportunity arises, take it. And take it we did.

Roth and Leeds only dropped 16 points between them all season (seven for Rotherham and nine for Leeds) which in a 26 game league is remarkable.

The sad part about it is that the team who missed out, Leeds gained 121 points out of a possible 130, far higher than the winners of the other two National 2 divisions, namely Esher and Dings Crusaders. Different teams I know, but the divisional positions did play a roll in enabling Hull Ionians to achieve safety, being the best placed 13th placed team in the three National 2 leagues. It’s a shame that such a rule didn’t apply at the top end of the league, as both teams deserved promotion.

Fortunately we secured the single promotion slot, not by any element of luck, but by a dogged refusal to let Leeds get too far ahead, and by our own abilities.

In drama, this was a season even to rival some of those halcyon days back at the turn of the century. Rugby is alive and well in National 2 and thank you all the clubs to playing their part in making it a hell of a league.