Macclesfield suffered their first defeat of the season, going down 17-32 against Birmingham & Solihull at Priory Park on Saturday.
The Blues began the game in typically commanding fashion, the forwards were gaining the hard yards and all the momentum was with the hosts.
Against the run of play Ian Briggs knocked over a simple penalty for the Bees to give them an early 3-0 lead.
It only took a minute before Ryan Parkinson was back to his usual ways and had wiped out the visitors’ lead with a try.
The flanker took advantage of a lapse in the Bees defence and raced away from 20 metres to cross for the opening try.
The sequence then repeated itself, a Briggs penalty put his side back in the ascendancy but this time it took Parkinson five minutes to wipe that out with his 10th try of the season. In the midst of the first 20 minutes, pack leader Dave Marwick picked up an injury to his ankle. The second row tried to play on but was forced off midway through the first half – the extent of the injury is unclear at this moment.
On the half-hour mark two quick tries for the visitors gave them a 10-point lead.
Both tries were almost carbon copies but on different sides of the field; the first went to Oscar Heath who picked a line from full-back and found a gap in the Blues defence. Two minutes later David Evans picked a similar line cutting off his wing and going over.
In the 10 minutes left of the first half the Blues were desperately trying to get a crucial score before half-time. But credit to the away side as they racked up a huge tackle count and refused to cough up that score. The teams went in at half-time with scores 10-20.
Just like the first half the Blues came out fighting and earned themselves a penalty try within five minutes of the half. The referee lost patience after a number of scrums had been reset on the Bees’ five-metre line and went under the sticks to award the try.
It appeared that the hosts were back in the game but then a horrible five minutes made it a long way back. On the hour mark the Bees full-back Heath rounded off his hat-trick with two opportunistic tries when it seemed inevitable that the Blues would be the ones to score.
Macclesfield continued to batter the visitors’ defence but could find no way through.
They found themselves in good attacking positions regularly but handling errors at crucial times would stop them in their tracks.
There were no more scores and the Bees held on to a 17-32 lead to win.
Next week the Blues travel to Otley looking to get back to winning ways.
This weekend’s opponents went down 27-35 to Stourbridge last time out.
