6th October  2007 - Hull Ionians  14  Macclesfield 12   - National 3 North     pictures

Hull Ionians once again won  a tight match in injury time as they at least stuck to the task to the end, even if much of their game can be described as lethargic and strewn with errors, especially when they gave away two tries in the first half. The club has the honorary services of two club doctors, a GP, Rob, and a Heart Consultant, John, to whom the club is extremely grateful. However if the team keeps winning like this they are more likely to be needed by the supporters not the players, especially John!

Hull Ionians made a good start to the game and soon had a penalty on the board from James Ferguson. 5 minutes later the team was too slow to react to low numbers in the line-out and even slower to react to the quickly taken free kick. A quick tap and go released flanker Alex Shaw to run through for a try converted by Ross Winney. Hull Ionians responded from a quickly taken line-out moving the ball across the field for Gary Stephenson to have space but he was caught at the line and had lost touch with his wingman so the chance was lost. Macclesfield were at last being penalised for persistently killing the ball and James Ferguson added his second goal. However this was followed by a combination of wrong options, lost possession then missed tackles that allowed right wing Dan Massey to score starting from his own 22.

Macclesfield opened the second half with an attempted drop goal that drifted wide but apart from 3 brief spells spent most of the match defending in their own half. James Ferguson missed a long range penalty awarded for killing the ball, then on 62 minutes repeated offside on the goal line at last produced a yellow card and this penalty was kicked for the attacking line-out. A good take by Richard Hill saw Chris Fores receive the ball and be driven over for the try, but the touch line conversion to level the scores went wide. Macclesfield had one last attack stealing the ball after a good drive out of defence, but the defensive line held. Then when Richard Moorhouse ran out of defence a high tackle produced another yellow card for the visitors back row and they were back on their own 22. Catch and drive saw another penalty and this time James Ferguson kicked the challenging goal to once again win the match.