Match report courtesy of Brian Tilley, Hexham Courant.

Revitalised Tynedale lit up an afternoon as black as a Yorkshire miner‘s string vest to register their first back to back wins since the start of last season.
The hard-earned win also gave Tynedale the double over the fellow strugglers Huddersfield, and opened up a seven point gap between Tynedale and the National League Division Two North drop zone.

It was a tremendous performance bearing in mind that the players haven’t trained at Corbridge since the first week in December, and several players, including Jack Harrison, Matty Outson and Rob Parker were missing from the squad. The win was all the more creditable for the fact that Huddersfield had a couple of dual registered players from Leeds Carnegie in their ranks.

The spirit in the squad is sky high and on this performance the settled forward pack are becoming quite a formidable unit, regularly dominating the much larger Huddersfield eight in the tight and competing well in both loose play and the lineout.
The return to the front row of the excellent Alex Westgarth has made a huge difference to Tynedale’s scrummaging, but he was matched by fellow prop Peter Southern and hooker Louis Frankland in a fine all round display. The key to the success though was the all-action play of back rowers Scott Powell, Nick Cairns and Ben Bell, who were well supported by second rows Graeme Dunn and Jonny Cousin who tackled, foraged and harried the opposition all afternoon.

Discipline in the last five minutes, when Huddersfield were trying desperately to snatch at least a draw, was terrific, as to defend without giving away penalties was great - a credit to the players and staff alike.
The Tynedale visitors were treated to some fabulous Yorkshire hospitality, made even more impressive by the fact that Huddersfield even took a collection among their own fans for the Tynedale Flood Fund. The missing men necessitated a reshuffle with regular centre Ash Smith moving to fly half, from where he ran the back line extremely well in atrocious conditions. He formed a solid link with scrum half Dan Taylor, who worked hard both in attack and defence, and helped himself to a well taken individual try. Tynedale took the lead on three minutes with a penalty by Smith, but hard work from the home side‘s Tom Hodson forced a knock-on from Tynedale. Huddersfield took full advantage from the scrum when hooker Lewis Bradley scrambled over the line for the first try of the match. Chris Bell converted to give the Yorkshiremen a 7-3 lead with 23 minutes gone, and then landed a well judged penalty to put the Lockwood side well on the way to avenging the 23-17 defeat at Tynedale back in September.

But Tynedale responded well, with the exciting Taylor making a mockery of the conditions by shimmying his way past four defenders for a superb individual try. Smith’s conversion brought the scores level with 37 minutes gone, but to keep the purple patch going, Smith darted in for his own try from another solo effort with the final play of the first half. His conversion gave Tynedale a 17-10 interval lead.
The balance tilted even further Tynedale‘s way early in the second half when Huddersfield second row Jarrad Williams picked up a yellow card, and while he was off the field, Smith added three more points to the Tynedale tally with a penalty to increase the lead to 10 points. Huddersfield didn’t give up hope though, and substitute Adam Kanouras burst down the left wing to sail over for a great try, well converted by Bell, to leave Tynedale with a nervous final quarter to negotiate
However, they held their nerve well to shut their opponents out, and take their victory count to three out of the last four.

Photo courtesy of The Huddersfield Examiner