Report

Rutherford crashed to a heavy defeat in a game where we simply didn't get going.

Despite early chances falling to Chris Morris and Graeme Troughton, we couldn't force the ball over the line to take a lead that would undoubtedly have settled us down.

However, with far too much space being offered to the Reyrolle midfield, we found ourselves behind on 11 minutes as a simple passing move saw the visiting striker, North, sidefoot home from 12 yards out.

This lead was doubled on 18 minutes as a terrible mixup between MacGregor and McMeekin gifted an open goal for striker Sweeney to score.

The 2nd half started a lot brighter though with the introduction of Eddie Keenan on the wing and Ross Taylor up front, and a great move by us saw Shaun Todhunter feed Troughton to score from the edge of the area on 57 minutes.

This spurred Rutherford on although Hebburn defended well, and this lead to gaps at the back in which Sweeney exploited to make the score 3-1, despite the efforts of the Rutherford defence who got a number of blocks in on his initial shots.

Finally, Sweeney completed his hat-trick with 10 minutes to play to effectively end the game as a contest.  A disappointing afternoon as we fell well short of the performance we are capable of.  3 points lost but the manner in which we bounce back is more important now.