Nottingham staged a remarkable comeback, their biggest this century, to defeat Hartpury in the final home game of the season. Trailing by 26 points after less than half an hour, the Archers ran in seven unanswered tries, eight in total, to take the victory 54-33.
Nottingham Head Coach Craig Hammond was pleased to see that his game plan was ultimately effective: “We’ve had a pretty rough couple of months and some tough losses.” said Hammond, “We said we had to go out there and express ourselves and after 18 minutes, when you’re 26-0 down, I thought maybe we got our messaging wrong. But I’ve got to give credit to the boys, how they fought. When we get our stuff right and we’re physical and we keep hold of the ball we can score some good tries.”
It initially looked like there would be a repeat of some of the recent demoralising defeats as Ryan Olowofela picked up his third yellow card in four outings, this time for a high tackle near his own try line. Ethan Hunt drove over from the ensuing maul. And Hartpury immediately extended their lead as they turned the ball over on their own 22 then exploited the space wide left with Alex Morgan crossing. Less than five minutes later Morgan got his second of the match, this time between the posts.
Nottingham were then briefly reduced to 13 men as Harry Graham was penalised for a deliberate knock on as Hartpury were making yet another break for the line. Hunt was the beneficiary from the maul once again and Hartpury secured their try bonus point with barely a quarter of an hour on the clock.
It wasn’t until the 25th minute that the Archers managed to establish some sort of foothold. A Nottingham scrum ten metres out led to a penetrating run by number eight James Cherry and he set up Will Yarnell to score his first try for the club.
The scrum half was delighted to break his duck: “It’s been a running joke that I’ve not scored for Notts” said Yarnell, “but now I’m a one metre specialist, the ball was put up, I fell over the line and I celebrated like I’d run it in from 50 metres.”
A show and go and darting run from Hartpury scrum half Mike Austin restored their 26 point lead soon afterwards before, in a portent of what was to come for the remainder of the match, Nottingham strung together their most free-flowing passage of play so far, with Harry Clayton the recipient of the final offload as he doubled the Archers’ tally on the half hour mark.
With the last play of the half Nottingham got the home crowd on their feet as more fast hands released Harry Graham to dive over by the left hand upright. Tom Threlfall added his third conversion of the evening to make the score Nottingham 21-33 Hartpury at the break.
Despite still being 12 points down there was real belief in the Nottingham squad and in the stands and within 15 minutes of the restart the home side were in the lead. David Williams managed to twice find gaps in the Hartpury defence, the first led to him scoring himself and he offloaded to Cherry on the second occasion. Both tries were converted by Threlfall to put the Archers two points ahead.
The momentum just kept building and Craig Hammond’s men extended their lead around the hour mark when Graham did well to prevent a clearance kick from going into touch. The ball inside found Olowfela who bobbed and weaved all the way from the halfway line to the try line.
Nottingham were also dominant up front by this point and, not wanting to be outshone by the backs, a driving maul took Jacob Wright over the line moments later.
Hartpury were unable to do anything to stop the marauding Archers as the half century of points was brought up by Javiah Pohe with ten minutes remaining in the contest. The visitors rallied slightly towards the end but Nottingham were able to see out the second biggest turnaround in their history.
Despite recent results, Yarnell outlined the belief within the Nottingham team that led to the victory: “We’ve had a really good mood in the squad, we’ve really got around each other and kept our identity. We could have easily blamed each other and critiqued our style but we stuck to our guns and we showed that tonight.”