THESE are heady days for Blaydon and they would dearly love to make it ten successive wins at Tynedale on Saturday.

Victory number nine propelled them three points ahead of Rosslyn Park into clear second place in National One. But the gap could have been five.

Leading 28-5 with the fourtry bonus point in the bag with 12 minutes left, they replaced some key men with youngsters and almost paid the price.

Rosslyn Park scored three tries in seven minutes and still had five minutes left to snatch the winner. It was never seriously threatened, but the visitors had grabbed two unlikely bonus points.

Blaydon’s player-coach Micky Ward was back on the field at the end, having retired ten minutes into the second half to take another look at teenage prop Trevor Davison.

Once the fourth try had been scored, skipper Matt Hall and fly half Andrew Baggett also made way for Dan Sanderson and Jamie Guy.

There can be few better hookers than Hall outside the Premiership, but blooding young front row men at this level is tough and the previously dominant scrum suddenly started going backwards.

There seemed no cause for alarm when a long pass gave Rosslyn Park’s slippery left winger Neville Edwards a clear run to the left corner.

But when the visitors attacked again missed tackles resulted in a try in the right corner.

Having previously shown little in attack through being well shackled, the Londoners were now off the leash and a deep restart allowed them to run it out of their 22. Edwards made ground up the left before the ball was moved right and they again squeezed in at the corner.

That made the try-count 4- 4, but Baggett’s ninth 100 per cent success rate of the season with the boot made the difference.

There were no penalties within his range, but several which were kicked to the corner with disappointing results because Blaydon struggled to secure their line-out ball.

Their first three tries came during ten first half minutes when a Rosslyn Park prop was in the sin-bin.

The first did come from a catch-and-drive when Hall threw to impressive No 8 Ben Morris at the tail then secured the ball at the back of the driving maul for a well-executed touchdown.

The yellow card proved decisive as the deadlock of the opening quarter suddenly gave way to one-way traffic and from turnover ball just inside their own half Blaydon broke up the left.

Flanker Jamie Hamilton made 30 metres before turning the ball inside to scrum half Jonny Burn.

He was stopped just short, but Hamilton drove over by the posts.

Just before the sin-binned prop returned Morris touched down a pushover try and it looked all over at 21-0.

But Rosslyn Park hit back strongly, kicking a series of penalties to the right corner before finally driving over.

The most impressive piece of skill of the first half came just before the interval when Blaydon’s teenage full back, Nathan Bailey, defied the slippery conditions by side-stepping two tackles. Had his inside pass been more precisely delivered it might have produced a try.

The experienced Hall Charlton went on at scrum half for the final 30 minutes and it always looked likely that Blaydon would extend their 21-5 lead.

There were few backs moves of note, but the fourth try resulted from a break up the left from halfway. Winger Gavin Painter made ground before off-loading to the talented Bailey, who glided past a tackle to score by the posts.

That appeared to be job done, but the desire to give other youngsters some game time almost backfired and it needed the resolve and knowhow of old heads like Charlton, Chris Wearmouth and Rob Bell to ensure victory was not squandered.