Three teams, McMillan Academy, Middlesbrough, Manor College of Technology and St Hilds C of E, contested this final on 27^th March, 2012 at  West Hartlepool RFC. The format of the Final was that each team played the other two sides in games of 20 minutes. The winner being the team that won both of their games or in the case of a tie in games won the team which scored the most tries over the course of the 2 games would be crowned champions.

The first game of the afternoon saw MacMillan Academy take on St Hilds. It was a very close game with St Hilds drawing first blood and taking a 5 – 0 lead into half time thanks to a well worked unconverted try. MacMillan rallied in the second half but were frustrated by some excellent defence from St. Hilds. Their efforts were finally rewarded when they scored a try in the last minute of normal time. Unfortunately for St Hilds this was scored under the posts making it an easy conversion resulting in MacMillan running out winners 5 – 7.

The second game saw St Hilds play Manor College. Manor got the game off to a great start as they played some exhilarating rugby in front of the good sized crowd who were in attendance. St Hilds had been unlucky to lose their star man in their opening game but to their credit they never gave up battling right until the final whistle. Despite their best efforts they could not prevent Manor running out winners by the margin of 33 – 0.

The third and final game was therefore the decider as Manor faced MacMillan. Manor drew first blood and scored the opening try through powerful tight head prop Aaron Maguire. This was converted by Lewis Pringle to make the score 7 – 0. MacMillan came back strongly and scored a well worked try which they converted to make it 7 – 7.

From the kick off Manor’s Connor Allen kicked long and great pressure from Captain and Number 8 Alex Lightfoot saw him take the ball before scoring out wide. Lewis Pringle narrowly missed the conversion leaving the score at12 – 7. The game took a turn for the worse for Manor when they lost a centre to the Sin Bin with two minutes of the game remaining. This proved crucial as in injury time MacMillan ran strongly at the 13 channel leading to them scoring a try. A successful conversion would have clinched the game for the Teessiders’ but unfortunately for them the kick dropped agonisingly short of its target. The understandable disappointment for MacMillan was in complete contrast to the emotions enjoyed by Manor who had won their first piece of silverware since 1996.The trophy was presented to skipper Alex LIGHTFOOT by John Dove, Durham County RFU Committee member.

Date (of image) : 28/3/2012

Donor : John G Dove

Creator : John G Dove

Part of the "John G Dove" collection