Warriors AASE suffer defeat to Newcastle’s Gosforth Academy

Warriors AASE suffered a 24-14 defeat to last year’s finalists Gosforth Academy on a wet and windy afternoon at Kingston Park on Wednesday.

Newcastle Falcons’ AASE side opened the scoring after a strong maul allowed their number eight to peel off and get behind the gainline before he offloaded to a support player, who scored underneath the posts.

Gosforth soon followed their opening try with a second after a kick found space in behind the Worcester defence to cause the visitors all sorts of problems.

Warriors found themselves 14-0 behind but responded with a try of their own before half-time when a dominant scrum gave the backs the platform to play just outside the Gosforth 22.

A perfectly-timed running line from Paul Wells allowed him to go through untouched to score, before Jake Leonard converted to halve Warriors’ deficit to seven points at the break.

Conditions deteriorated in the second-half and handling became more difficult. But Warriors got themselves on the front foot and scored a superb team try after a series of neat offloads and superb handling.

Warriors eventually broke the Gosforth defence, allowing Nathan Gaiderman to go clean through and score, before Leonard converted to level the scores at 14 apiece.

The next 20 minutes proved tense and Worcester dominated large parts of play, leading to a penalty that Leonard narrowly missed from out wide.

Gosforth responded with a long-range penalty of their own, which was successful as they regained their lead.

Demonstrating their character and resolve the Worcester team battled hard to get the winning score, but unfortunately couldn’t find a way through and were punished as Gosforth had one last opportunity and took it in the final play of the game after good play from the backs.

AASE Manager Ryan Watkins said: “The boys were bitterly disappointed with the result and felt it was not a true reflection of how they have played for most of the season.

“However, their character was impeccable as always, and the boys will have learnt some tough lessons from the game which will stand them in good stead in the future.”

The defeat means that Warriors will now face London Irish’s St Paul’s College on Tuesday 5 December (venue and kick-off TBC) in a fifth-place decider.

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