Harrogate RUFC were right not to postpone Luctonians fixture despite having 10 players missing, insists Dave Doherty

Already missing a number of 1st XV regulars through injury, the Aces’ ranks were further depleted by a Covid-19 outbreak at Rudding Lane, meaning that they made the long trip to Herefordshire without 10 senior players.

Unsurprisingly, an extremely inexperienced ‘Gate side was dominated from start to finish by a home team boosted by a raft of new recruits, though director of rugby Doherty says he has no regrets when it comes to his decision to opt against postponing the match.

“We had a lot of players unavailable due to injury and Covid, so we spoke to the boys who were able to play and every single one of them wanted to go down there and play the game,” he revealed.

“We could have ducked this game. We could have had it called off due to the Covid situation and no questions would have been asked, but one of our key values as a club is honesty and we had the numbers available a 20-man squad of boys who wanted to play.

“Had we opted not to travel and had the game re-arranged then it is almost certain that this fixture would never have got played. There are no more blank weekends between now and May, and I don’t see the season being able to continue beyond then.

“People may view it as a naive decision, but I’m proud of the call we made. The players all knew that with the experience and quality we were missing that it was going to be extremely tough for them, but they still accepted the challenge.

“Obviously we are massively disappointed with the score, but playing the game was the right thing to do, so I accept full responsibility for the result.”

Harrogate were on the back foot from the word go and went into half-time 26-0 down, but things got even worse after the interval as Luctonians ran in 49 unanswered points.

“We weren’t at the races early on, we certainly could have started faster, we could have been more disciplined and more accurate in our work,” Doherty added.

“It goes without saying that we are really unhappy to have conceded so many points, regardless of the players we had missing.

“But Luctonians are a very good side. They’ve signed some really talented loan players from a Premiership club and they had some boys on debut who were superb. They knew how to exploit our inexperience.

“So, credit to our lads having the courage to accept the challenge because they knew what they were letting themselves in for.

“And the positives are that we have been able to get some more of our young boys some National Two experience. If we had postponed Saturday then we wouldn’t have seen our Colts captain Jacob Garratt come off the replacements’ bench early on and go on to earn himself the man of the match award.”

Harrogate have to do it all again this weekend as they take on Luctonians for the second time in seven days, though Doherty is certain that Saturday’s showdown at Rudding Lane will be an entirely different affair.

“It will be a completely different game this weekend,” he said.

“We’ll still be missing a number of bodies through injury, but we could have up to eight senior players back available and that will be massive for us.

“We know about Luctonians’ quality, they’re a really strong team, but we’re playing them in our back yard and we’ll be looking to get after them.”

Saturday’s match gets underway at 2pm.