THE THESAURUS gives various synonyms for the word ‘frustration’ including annoyance, dissatisfaction, failure, grievance and irritation, but perhaps another word to add to that list could be ‘Kenilworth’, reports Peter Jones.
After a very impressive victory over Hereford two weeks ago, Kenilworth slipped to a second successive away defeat away at struggling Leek who are already doomed to relegation from the Midlands West One but they were the much more compsed side of the two on Saturday.
Matters did not start well when stand out backrow forward Mikkel Andresen injured himself in the warm-up and had to be replaced by Ed Hannam who was one of the more impressive players on a generally disappointing day.
Few aspects of Kenilworth’s game fared well with the notable exception of the scrummage where Dan Roberts is developing into a very solid tight head prop.
Several of the Kenilworth players looked below par, with captain Sam Went struggling with a repetition of his knee injury and Kalum Goodfellow was lacking match fitness.
Various individuals made brave attempts to get the side moving including the ever energetic Gareth Renowden, Josh Hickman, winger Joe Jepps, Ollie Burman and full back Jamie Mapletoft but they were largely individual efforts swimming against the Leek tide.
The support was too slow and at crucial stages Kenilworth’s handling was poor under pressure. Marcus Andrew, Josh Fox and Rhys Jones came on as substitutes at around half time but were unable to make an impact.
Leek opened the scoring with two penalties in quick succession and then offloaded well to score their first try after 20 minutes. The kick was converted leaving the score at 13-10 at the midway point.
After 64 minutes Kalum Goodfellow used his not insubstantial bulk to crash over for a try in the corner but the conversion attempt was missed.
Leek soon responded, however, to put the score at 18-5 but the last ten minutes were distinguished by three events.
It firstly started snowing and then Leek succeeded in giving away two completely unnecessary yellow cards putting them down to 13 men.
Despite this, Kenilworth could not score and the game finished at 18-5
