West Park U13s 31 – 14 Rossendale U13s

Rossendale U13s travelled down the East Lancs road looking to build upon recent good wins and cement their position near the top of their qualifying pool. However, West Park had different ideas. The game opened with Dale kicking off into the sun, but were pushed back into their own half by some strong running and excellent rucking by the Park pack. The Dale forwards, on paper, were the better pack but struggled to get the edge at the breakdown, with West Park retaining their ball well, and stealing far too many Dale balls. West Park used their back line to good effect, spinning the ball out quickly to attack the gaps in the visitors’ defence. To Dale’s credit, they managed to keep out the home side for the first 10 minutes, until the West Park back line fired again and saw the winger dab the ball down in the corner for their first of 3 tries in the first half. With only one conversion, this gave West Park a 17-nil lead, and it looked like the Dale lads could have let their heads go down. After a few encouraging words from the coaching staff, a period of 10 minutes followed where both sides cancelled each other out until, with the last play of the first half, Rhys Tighe broke through the West Park defence and crossed the line under the posts for his try. PJ Butler converted to end the half West Park 17 – 7 Rossendale.

After the break, West Park definitely came out of the gate the quicker, and were quickly on the board again with a converted try. Soon after, the pressure continued with Dale pinned in their own half, and after a series of penalties awarded against them, Dale were defending their try line when they infringed again and the referee lost his patience and awarded a penalty try. Dale managed to score a consolation try shortly afterwards when Sam Irving made good ground, offloaded in the tackle to Bradley Harris running in support, and finally out to Ben Ludlam to score his well-deserved try in the corner, proving how important the support runners are. PJ Butler converted the difficult kick. After one more unconverted West Park try, the game ended West Park 31 – 14 Rossendale.

Man of the Match was awarded to the captain, Ciaran Campbell, for his efforts all over the pitch and 4 or 5 try-saving tackles.

Whilst the scoreline was OK against a side as strong as West Park, it was disappointing knowing that we can ruck much better than we did today - we were hanging back and not reacting quickly enough - and that would have made for a much closer scoreline had we been able to to rumble through the forwards with out better pack. Anyway, let's learn from this and get back to the level of rucking that we showed in the last few games, work together as a team and we'll get back to that winning feeling.