Deva Give Salford Rough Ride in National League

A PLUCKY Deva side took on Salford, the current leaders of the northern section of the England National League, on Sunday.

Whilst the final score of 38-29 shows a comfortable win for Salford, congratulations must go to Deva for scoring quite so many goals. Indeed, a result that looked pretty unlikely at half time as Salford led by 11 goals.

This time though the usual Salford gear change failed to materialise. Instead of pushing on in their usual manner to open up an even greater lead, Salford simply seemed to coast along.

Deva sniffed their chance to capitalise and took it. Keeping neck and neck with Salford all the way through the half, indeed for a while the young side from Chester even managed to close the gap a little before Salford once again took it back to nine goals, finishing the game winners by 38 goals to 29.

All in all the gap between the teams never got lower than 7 goals, so the result was never in doubt. However, Deva will take lots of positives from the game and will now go in to their remaining fixtures with a much deserved confidence boost.

In other Northern Section action, Liverpool Speke Garston continue to improve as they gave Nottingham University a hard match at Greenbank before the students ran out 35-31 winners.

Both teams were strong in defence in the opening eight minutes of this encounter as both teams defended keeping the score to 0-0. The less experienced Liverpool Speke Garston team matched Nottingham goal for goal and only by squandering a number of clear shots at goal went in at the break down at 14 -11.

The second half proved entertaining, Campillo for Liverpool Speke Garston found his shooting arm along with his counterpart, Nottingham’s Mardaras, who scored nine.

Liverpool efforts were rewarded when they took the lead and opened a two-goal difference late in the second half, they held on until the final six minutes but a two-minute time suspension to Davies turned the game in Nottingham’s favour who capitalised and pressed home the advantage ruthlessly and ran out winners at 35-31.

In other action, Manchester came out on top against University of Manchester 25-23, while Leeds Hornets also secured a narrow win, 27-26 over Liverpool Wolves.

* In the southern section, London GD and Olympia battled out a 30-30 draw, while Ruislip beat Oxford University 37-22.