YORK Acorn's hopes of starting the NCL division two campaign with a win were thwarted by a poor final quarter display away to Wakefield-based Eastmoor Dragons, who won 18-8.

Acorn's preparations were disrupted by several late withdrawals, but still it was a game they should have won.

For much of the game Acorn looked in control, and for an hour they held the lead.

The first half proved to be a defence-dominated encounter, with few clear scoring chances. The majority of the game was played among the forwards and Acorn were indebted to the tackling of second rower Carl Stannard, prop Carl Rollinson and hooker Lee Frank.

In the loose the willingness of man-of-the-match centre Michael Embleton, winger Kev Brundett and full-back Andy Lee to get involved helped to give Acorn the edge in the first period.

It was 16 minutes before a point was scored and it came in bizarre fashion - a high Andy Lee up-and-under bounced off the scrum cap of Eastmoor's left-winger Ishtikar Sadiq and was gratefully pounced on by Acorn centre Kenny Embleton for an unconverted score.

Eastmoor halved Acorn's lead minutes later with a penalty goal from stand-off Jonathan Hirst.

Despite having Acorn full-back Andy Lee sin-binned for holding down on 26 minutes, Acorn increased their lead when Stannard powered over in the left corner for another unconverted score.

Right on the stroke of half time Eastmoor cut Acorn's lead to 8-4 following another Hirst penalty.

He repeated this feat on 51 minutes and Acorn's failure to hold the ball for a full set of six combined with their ever increasing ill-discipline, backed by a mounting penalty count was bringing Eastmoor more and more into the game.

In the final ten minutes, Eastmoor registered two converted scores. To make matters worse Acorn were to play this period with only 12 men as a result of a bad ankle ligament injury to one of their players after they had used all their allocated substitutions.

Eastmoor took the lead for the first time when centre James Ganley crashed over from close range for Hirst to convert.

They extended their lead and secured an improbable win when the ball bounced back following a three-man tackle and was snapped up by scrum-half Kevin Brown, who darted over for another Hirst-converted try.

Updated: 11:54 Monday, August 26, 2002