The team was made up of a number of new players to the club and to the game, as well as some players who 'guested' for us from our friends at Northallerton.

The game started with Castle struggling to get out of their own half and unfortunately a blocked kick allowed Darlington to get on the score sheet first, 0-7. This seemed to light a fuse in the very young team and Jack Hassall made a fantastic break and fed to Maurice Batiuluna to score. Ben Gray's conversion was good, to level the scores at 7-7.

Whilst Barney were back in the game, a couple of moments later Darlington took a quick penalty, whilst Barney had there backs turned and were retreating and this edged them in front again. They quickly added another try whilst Barney were still reeling from the easy tap penalty, as well as struggling in the heat, 7-21.

Castle pulled themselves together and were constantly asking questions of the Darlington defence. An 'up and under' wasn’t dealt with and Sam Watson gathered the ball and sneaked his way through for a try. Gray was again successful with the kick, 14-21 at half-time.

At the start of the second half Castle continued to press Darlington and an unsuccessful kick to touch was fielded by Kieran Tamplin who weaved his way past would be tacklers to feed Jordan Portlock, who somehow off loaded to Dan Jeffries who barged his way over for the try. With the conversion kick missed the score stood at 19-21 and it was very much 'game on'!!

Darlington replied immediately, however, with a try under the posts, 19-28. Barney weren’t finished and weren’t prepared to lay down and a lovely move from Batiuluna at 8 to Ollie Redding, who off-loaded the ball to Matt Last to score in the corner. With the difficult kick missed the score had again narrowed to 24-28.

This was followed up by the 'Batiuluna show', after some good team work for the lads to work up the pitch a quick ball from 9 allowed him to break a tackle and sprint to the line untouched. The kick was missed, but Castle held the narrowest of leads,29-28. He hadn’t got his breath back when he received the ball back again in midfield and again broke a tackle and charged to line for his well-deserved hat-trick. With the conversion good by Redding Barney now led, 36-28.

With 10mins remaining Barney just needed to run down the clock with controlled ball to hang on for the win, but Darlington managed to find some fresh legs to bring on and they worked the ball up the pitch to score 2 quick try’s in the dying minutes to somehow come away with a 40-36 win!

The Castle lads were bitterly disappointed by the loss, but they should be really proud of their performance against a settled and experienced Darlington 3rd team.

The team shows so much promise and once they used to playing together great things are ahead. Man of the Match went deservedly to Maurice Batiuluna. Honourable mentions to Connor Stewart, making his debut at hooker, Ollie Redding marshalling the backline, Jack Hassall, who had an outstanding game covering multiple positions, Archie Gent doing all the dirty work from 6 and Kieran Tamplin, who constantly gave the opposition winger nightmares when he came on.

Team Richard Welsby, Connor Stewart, Chris Benn, Maurice Batiuluna, Regan Foster, Dan Last, Archie Gent, Chris Holmes, Ben Gray, Ollie Redding, Matt Last, Jack Hassall, Sam Watson, Jordan Portlock, Ethan Sedgewick, Kieran Tamplin, Dan Jeffries, Richie Johnson, William Harrison

Paul Davis