Macclesfield Blues travelled to the north east of the country for the third and final time of the season on Saturday to play second bottom Tynedale and returned home with their second win of the season.
A hard fought and somewhat scrappy game was decided by the boot of young fly half Tom Morton who kicked a penalty late on to snatch the victory for the travelling Blues.
It took 15 minutes for the first score of the game and it went to the hosts against the run of play. The Blues had control of possession deep in Tynedale territory but a loose ball was hacked up the pitch by the Tynedale winger and pounced upon to open the scores.
Another fifteen minutes passed before the next score and unfortunately for the Blues it went again to the hosts. This time a well-deserved score built strong set piece at the line out. The backs then looked to move the ball wide to secure their second score, but it was uncoverted, 12-0.
The Blues managed to get a try of their own with five minutes to play before the break. After a long period of pressure on the Tynedale line, second row David Marwick picked from the back of a ruck and crashed over, 12-7.
The Blues however allowed Tynedale to restore their lead with the final play of the half, missed tackles allowing Tynedale to breeze in to make it 17-7.
Macc got off to a blistering start in the second half, winger and leading try scorer Matt King crossing for his 12th of the season after more strong phase play from Macclesfield to score in the corner, 17-12.
The game then went through a particulary scrappy period, both sides coughing up possession to each other, yet with the errors came a lot of scrummaging, and a dominant Macclesfield pack meant that the hosts looked to be tiring the quicker of the two sides.
In the 74th minute, King scored his second of the game and 13th of the season, after kicking the ball in behind the defence, was tasked with a footrace against his opposite man, King managed to beat him to the ball by a fingertip to get the score, however, Morton failed to convert which meant The Blues trailed by two points with just over five minute to play.
After some nervous periods of possession, Tynedale coughed up a penalty 35 metres out in front of the sticks, young Tom Morton stepped up and delivered for The Blues to make it 20-22 with precious little time to play.
Blues Starting XV
15 Greg Newton
14 Josh Fowles
13 Elliot Brierley
12 Sam James
11 Matt King
10 Tom Eaton
9 Jordan Brookes
1 Marshall Gadd
2 Sam Moss
3 Billy Robinson
4 Dave Marwick
5 Dean Williams
6 Mike Finnemore (c)
7 Phil Williams
8 Franky Barker
16 Ryan Jackson
17 Shane Heffernan
18 Liam Parfitt
19 Tom Morton
20 Matt O’Regan
