KEVAN Oliphant is planning to work his Darlington Mowden Park players hard this week after sparing their blushes with an injury time drop goal on Saturday.

The player-coach was justifiably unhappy with Northern Group referee David Drury, but admitted Mowden did not play well until they suddenly found themselves 14 points down with ten minutes left.

With no notable second half stoppages, the match was 90 seconds into injury time when Oliphant's sweetly-struck drop goal from 25 metres brought massive relief.

He had gone on for the last 25 minutes to replace Jonny Golightly at fly half, only to see an 11-6 lead become a 25-11 deficit, with two of the three tries Tynedale scored in ten minutes being hotly disputed.

"For one of them their guy was lying on the bottom of a ruck and picked the ball up and set off with it," said Oliphant.

"The next came when a drop goal rebounded off a post straight to someone in an off-side position.

"The referee admitted afterwards he got it wrong for both of those tries.

"We are finding there's no consistency with referees at this level. If we knew what they were going to be like we could plan our game around it.

"Some heads went down when those decisions went against us, but we showed a lot of character in coming back."

With a home match against second-placed Doncaster on Saturday followed by a trip to rapidly-improving Scunthorpe, Oliphant added: "We are planning really tough sessions on both Tuesday and Thursday to get some things sorted out.

"We just don't seem to be firing at the moment. In the past we have had one or two players who could spark 20-point surges, but that's not happening.

"It made a difference when Mick Kent went on for the last ten minutes.

"He had had flu all week, but he broke tackles and was the only one to make inroads."

Tynedale defended stoutly, and after taking an 11-0 lead Mowden found themselves further stifled by Mr Drury's incessant whistling.

After Kevin McCallum scored in the third minute following a quickly-taken penalty, there was no flow or pattern to the match until Tynedale scored their equalising try with 20 minutes left.

Having played to the letter of the law, it was ironic that when Mr Drury began to get it wrong he ensured a climax in complete contrast to all that had gone before.

The victory completed a National Division Three North double for Mowden over Tynedale, but they still have to play Doncaster twice and victory at home will be essential if they are to have serious hopes of promotion.

They were slightly helped on Saturday by the fact that just as they stirred themselves Tynedale flanker Andy Robson was sin-binned for killing the ball.

Mowden scored two tries during his absence, both from line-out drives, to narrow the gap to two points.

They were 8-0 up after five minutes and Mark Bedworth's second penalty made it 11-0 midway through the first half.

Alan Moses was very secure at full back for Tynedale but he has recently opted out of goal-kicking and their excellent No 8 Andrew Murray landed two penalties before half-time.

The experiment of playing Golightly at fly half, with Chris Strong at inside centre, didn't work for Mowden and they were outplayed by Keith Dungait and Mark Walton as Tynedale began to get on top.

Dungait might have done better when he broke out from under his own posts, made 40 metres then tried a reverse pass when something simpler would have been more effective.

But the fly half made amends after 60 minutes when he intercepted just inside halfway and outpaced Oliphant to the left corner to level the scores.

Walton then strode straight through some feeble tackling to score near the posts and Murray converted.

A Tynedale win looked certain when Dungait's drop goal rebounded off a post and they regathered to send Moses over.

Murray again converted, but from the penalty resulting from Robson's yellow card Mowden found touch at the corner and prop Danny Brown was driven over.

With four minutes left Mowden ran another penalty and winger Steve Jones was tackled into touch in the corner.

They won the line-out and this time hooker Tasi Tuhana got the touchdown.

Oliphant converted then landed his drop goal with what was virtually the last kick of the game.