Sedgefield Spartans journey in the Vets cup and plate competition is over after a thrilling encounter between these two sides, West Hartlepool vets were made up of seasoned ex national league and county players amongst their rank whilst Sedgies honours board is still led by Dougie Wardle who once tackled Rob Andrew at school.

After much frantic hunting for a front row to allow us to have competitive scrummages up stepped the 1st hero on a day of heros with Michael Bishop agreeing to strap up his broken thumb and give it a go, Keith Corrigan slid over to hooker whilst resident panto villain Graham Brennan completed a grizzly front row that has looked unlikely just an hour earlier!.

The game kicked off after a leisurely warm up for both sides and despite early pressure from Wests huge pack, it was Sedgie who scored first, an interception under his own posts saw Dave 'the model' Birkin hair off up the field surely not to be caught, however, Wests 79 year old winger got back and caught him but Birkins offload found Gaz Pratt who also got caught and he offloaded back to Birkin who scored.

West hit back quickly, they really looked after the ball well and scored a driving try from a series of rucks to level the scores.

Sedgie though struck back, Kyle Sutcliffe relishing his role as a centre making some yards and finding Andy Fife who scored out wide.

Again West came back but again Sedgie worked well to get up the field and a great line from Paul Wilkinson saw Sedgie approaching half time 17 - 5 to the good with Shepherds conversion

However, West struck twice before half time as we let the lead slip and turned around 17 - 17. A short lapse that was to cost us dearly.

West started the second half on fire. In their number 8 Boatman they had the games best player and he gave them loads of front foot ball and with a number ten with a boot like cannon pushing us back continually. It wasn't long before we we 17-22.

Sedgie though struck back again, with Delderfield and Wardle combining to make a break, Pratt moved the ball for Paul Soakell to score and level the game.

Sedgie continued to smell blood and roared forward and took a penalty advantage, Shepherd found coach Addison in space but his hands and basic rugby ability let him down and left him prone on the deck having dropped the ball over the line. However, we came back for the penalty and stand in skipper Brennan wisely took the 3 points to give us a 25-22 lead in the closing minutes of the game

West came straight back, recovering the kick off and whilst Sedgies defence held firm West were just too strong and barged over with a minute to go to take a 25 - 27 lead.

Despite having time to kick off we couldn't recover the ball and West hammered the kick into touch to send them through.

Sedgies cup dream over, its been a great adventure being in the vets cup for a club of our size to put 2 full sides out every week, an occasional 3rds and a vets shows us as healthy as anyone in the area for providing rugby to our growing membership.

Congratulations to West, we hope you enjoyed the game and we wish you well in the next round v Horden. West were too streetwise for us at times and were deserving winners.

Thanks to the ref Colin Davidson, cant be easy managing a game full of older fellas who think they know better but it was well managed and a good close contest played in the right spirit.

Sedgie will hope to keep the vets going, thanks to our guests from Liam Savage from Seaton Carew, George from Acklam and Paul Soakell from Aycliffe. All welcome to play at Sedgie anytime