TEENAGE fly-half Billy Searle is hoping he has done enough to earn his first Plymouth Albion start against Fylde at Brickfields this Saturday.
The 19-year-old was handed his Albion debut as a half-time replacement away at Hull Ionians at the weekend.
He ended up scoring a try and kicking three conversions as Albion rescued an unlikely losing bonus point in East Yorkshire. After 55 minutes, Plymouth were 25-0 down but the final score ended up 25-21 with Searle, Jarrad Hayler and Matt Shepherd crossing the whitewash for he visitors.
“I was pleased to get my chance,” said Searle. “Hopefully, I have done enough to start next week.
“I enjoyed my half and I thought I did well when I got on, but we’ll just have to see what happens.
“There is a lot of competition at 10, but hopefully next week I can get a start, that’s what I’m looking for.”
Searle admitted all the Albion players were disappointed to only return from the 700-mile round trip with one point.
“It was gutting not to get the win after such a good comeback,” he said. “But we just let it slip a bit too much in the first half.
“We robbed a bonus point which was good, but if only we could have played like that earlier on it could have been a different story.
“We’ll look at the DVD and we’ll take stuff out of the comeback.
“If we could have played like that the whole of the game and just adapted the scrum a bit better we could have won that game.
“It was very disappointing. We went there looking to get four points, so it was disappointing to only come away with a bonus point, but we have to look to next week now.”
Meanwhile, centre Tom Bedford revealed it was touch-and-go whether he would make it to Hull due to the birth of his first child.
His wife had been due at the start of the season but only had their daughter – Margot Elisabeth – at 10.44pm on Wednesday night.
“She was 13 days over, so the phone had been with the coaches for the past three weeks, just to make sure I didn’t have to shoot off,” he said.
“Luckily she came on Wednesday night so I was fine. It worked out well.
“But it was touch-and-go (for Saturday’s game at Hull) for a little while as there were a few little complications but it’s worked out fine.”