IN A double coincidence, both Darlington teams lost 19-17 away from home last Saturday and both face Humberside opposition tomorrow.

Mowden Park visit Hull Ionians still smarting from their defeat at Loughborough Students, who hung on courtesy of uncontested scrums in the last ten minutes.

Mowden’s powerful front row were exerting such pressure in the scrums that victory seemed inevitable. But both of the students’ props and the hooker went down injured within a two-minute span just after the gap had come down to two points.

Darlington were also unlucky to lose at Beverley in North One, where they had three tries disallowed. For the final one the hosts knocked on over the line, flanker Ollie Mabbutt dropped on the ball and the referee awarded a five-metre scrum.

After two defeats it is not going to get any easier tomorrow, when Hull visit Blackwell Meadows. They are reported to have signed several Tongans and have won their first two games by big margins.

It looks like being a repeat of last season, when Darlington made a poor start before steadily improving.

But coach Kevin Robinson said: “I’m much happier than I was at this time last year. It’s a big test this week, but we have been competitive in both our games so far. The average age is only 22 or 23.

“We should have won easily at Beverley because we had at least 60 per cent of the game.

The last try we had disallowed was so clear-cut it was ridiculous.”

Darlington fielded the sons of two club stalwarts in 17- year-old fly half Nick Baldwin, son of former captain Bryan, and hooker Michael Stowe, son of Tony.

Ex-colt Luke Murphy scored a good try to add to a penalty by Alex Lineton for an 8-3 interval lead, but two converted breakaway tries put Beverley 17-8 ahead.

Stowe scored from a driving maul and Baldwin capped a good debut by converting from the touchline, but Darlington spurned two good chances in the last five minutes.

Mowden recalled burly prop Dave Sinclair to their starting line-up at Loughborough, and while he helped to give the home front row a tough time, if anything they suffered even worse when Dan Miller replaced him at half-time.

The hosts named Mowden’s hooker, New Zealander Howie Murray, man of the match while skipper Danny Brown completed the dominant front row.

Mowden had driven Loughborough off the ball and were attacking their line when the first prop went down.

The students were penalised for dropping the next scrum, then the other prop was injured, which meant both front row replacements were on.

A line-out followed, at which Loughborough knocked on but before the scrum was set the hooker went down, leaving the referee no choice but to award uncontested scrums.

That meant Mowden lost their platform after dominating possession against a team who, in typical student fashion, proved very adept at using their pace to counterattack from deep. Missed tackles contributed to their three breakaway tries.

The game was held up for almost an hour when Mowden’s No 6 Steve Holborough suffered a neck injury. He was taken to hospital in Nottingham, but was not as badly hurt as feared.

Holborough was replaced by Barnard Castle School product Michael Ellery, a member of the Newcastle Falcons Academy, who showed up well on his debut.

A Jon Benson penalty gave Mowden the lead, then the students’ first two tries, plus a conversion, put them 12-3 ahead.

Mowden came back with a try which stemmed from a break by Richard Ellis, who made an impressive debut at open side.

A series of pick-and-drives followed before Benson made ground and after several more phases No 8 George Carpenter was driven over.

Benson’s conversion made it 12-10 at half-time, and despite the long delay while an ambulance was summoned and paramedics attended to Holborough Mowden were quickly back on top on the resumption.

But Loughborough broke from their own 22 to score before Mowden’s pressure was rewarded when centre Adam McKenzie made a break and the ball was recycled for Brown to score.

Benson converted, but with uncontested scrums Mowden’s cause wasn’t helped when they had to send Sinclair back on after Carpenter retired with a knee injury.