Blaydon 3 London Scottish 40

Feb 6 2011 by Matthew Leslie, Sunday Sun

HAPLESS Blaydon were blown away by a rampant London Scottish side in a clinical six-try demolition at Crow Trees.

Promotion-chasing Scottish showed why they are at the top end of the league with a superb display by their backs who sliced through Blaydon’s defence like a knife through butter.

Blaydon couldn’t be faulted for their effort, but the gulf in class was all too apparent with the home side being in Scottish’s 22 as many times as North Korea has holiday-makers.

Scottish stretched their winning run to 15 while Blaydon’s losing streak now extends to four.

The signs that this could be a long afternoon for Tom Rock’s side came as early as the second minute.

A break through the middle by John Bordiss released Benjamin MacDougall on the left, who sprinted 20 metres into the corner. Fly-half James Brown converted to give Scottish a 7-0 lead.

From the restart, Blaydon forced Scottish into not releasing and Andrew Baggett nailed the resultant penalty from 30 metres to reduce the deficit to four.

That would be the last time Blaydon would trouble the scoreboard operator as Scottish went up several gears to put this game to bed before half-time.

The visitors drove Blaydon back to their own try-line and after a number of phases Simon Amor spread the ball to the left to Brown, who duly fed Gary Truman for an easy score. Brown converted.

On 14 minutes Scottish crossed over again thanks to a sublime piece of skill from Brown.

Spotting David Howells on the left, he launched a pin-point cross-kick towards the winger, who duly ran towards the line before off-loading to John Bordiss for the simplest of scores. Brown added the extras for a 21-3 lead. Scottish bagged the bonus-point fourth try after 23 minutes when a rolling maul had Blaydon’s pack at sixes and sevens before number 8 Mark Soden barged his way over the line. Brown converted.

Frustrations began to boil over in the Blaydon camp – on and off the pitch.

Chris Wearmouth threw a punch at his opposite lock, Daniel Palmer. And when Scottish’s backroom staff voiced their objections from the stand, a Blaydon fan also saw the red mist and launched a verbal tirade at them.

Half-time couldn’t come soon enough for Blaydon’s players and supporters.

But while the angry fan in the crowd had calmed down, the team hadn’t and a number of niggly offences at the breakdown crept in with the referee not having the best of times in trying to impose his authority.

That said, Blaydon were at least stopping the endless flow of Scottish attacks. However, they were unable to prevent them breaking through again in the 55th minute.