YMCA put up a fight in their Yorkshire Division II clash at Knottingley, but were over-powered in the second half – going down 27-10.
The home side knew how to play their small ground perfectly, but YM started brightly and caused problems for the opposition.
On 17 minutes YM were awarded a penalty after the home side were caught offside and Stead landed the goal from some distance out.
The tense start led to a battle between the packs and when that boiled over YM prop Will Sellers and his opposite number Sutcliffe were sin-binned.
Scrum half Simon Wilson was unlucky to not get an individual try after a blindside run from a scrum – the youngster showed great pace and looked to have got the touchdown only to have it disallowed when the linesman called his foot in touch.
Knottingley’s game-plan began to pay dividends and they were 7-3 to the good by half-time when prop Berry went in for a try and stand off Evans kicked the conversion.
The YM scrum held up well in the second half, but unfortunately they were being bettered in the line-out. The home side extended their lead when centre Burnett forced his way through to score, Evans again adding the goal.
Evans then added a drop goal to take the score further away from YM.
Centre Turton added another try for Knottingley and Evans hit the target to leave the visitors trailing by 21 points and a further Evans penalty put the home side firmly in the comfort zone.
To their credit YM did not give up and their enterprise paid off when a neat move saw Jon Smith get the beating of his man and score a try. Stead was on target with the difficult conversion for a consolation score.
