Colne & Nelson U11s 7 - 17 Rossendale U11s
This week saw the return fixture of Rossendale U11s against Colne and Nelson, which was combined into a triangular fixture with Burnley.
The first game saw Colne & Nelson keen to overturn Rossendale after last week’s defeat at Marl Pits. Rossendale started the brighter, with some good sustained pressure and ball retention, but Colne and Nelson repelled the Dale attacks until Isaac Cornwall drove through for his first try. Luke Bartram added the conversion. A period of Colne and Nelson pressure followed, but lost the ball in contact to Isaac Cornwall, who charged through for his second try. Two minutes later, Sam Irving went off on a darting through and broke through to score, ending the half at 0 – 17 to Rossendale.
The second half saw Colne & Nelson come out full of confidence and had the measure of the Rossendale attack. The only score of the half went to Colne & Nelson and the game ended 7 – 17.
Rossendale then faced a Burnley team who had watched the first, hard-fought encounter and were ready for the match. They applied the pressure on to the Dale defence throughout the game and scored two unanswered, converted tries to make the half time score 14 – 0.
After a quick half-time team talk, the Dale lads came out strong, but Burnley sneaked another converted try. This seemed to shake Rossendale into action, who fought back to score a consolation try from Harry Brown, which was converted by Luke Bartram to make the final score 21 – 7 to Burnley.
The Man of the Matches across the two games was Ben Ludlam, for his overall work rate and immense tackling effort.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the performances of everyone - you worked as a team and played with real effort and aggression.
The 2 key points for me were we need to get the ball out to the backs more and quicker, and we need to get over the ball in the rucks. But we can work on them in training this week :-)
So well done to everyone that played today, and a big thank you to the parents who continue to support us as we develop the team. We are getting there - It's great(but also hard!) to field a squad of 15 players and I appreciate the way that players took their turns on the bench with no complaints.