Huge congratulations to our U16s on a hard fought victory in this years’ Lancashire Bowl Final in a rollercoaster season finale versus Rochdale. Congratulations lads the whole club is proud of you

Full Match review
The final began with a minutes applause in a fitting tribute to Duncan Ogilvie a Rochdale junior coaching stalwart and well loved member of the north west rugby community who had tragically passed away earlier in the week. Our deepest condolences are with the Ogilvie family and all at Rochdale for their loss.

Bury started the match slowly conceding early breakdown penalties easily converted by Rochdale’s excellent stand off to take a 6-0 lead. Bury took the lead after disrupting a lineout on the edge of the Rochdale 22 with swift hands by the Bury backline leading to wing Schuster scoring in the corner with Byrom converting from out wide to put Bury in the lead 6-7.

Then followed a sustained period of pressure in the Bury line with Rochdale being denied multiple times by some excellent Bury defence, just as it looked like Rochdale were getting the ball out wide where they had an overlap Bury stand off Byrom intercepted and raced away downfield with some excellent cover defence stopping him on the 22, not be denied though he quickly popped the ball up to Bury captain Jones who galloped over in the corner to score. Byrom recovered his breath to convert again a difficult conversion from out wide with score now 6-14 in Bury’s favour.

With half time approaching Bury conceding another soft penalty at the breakdown which Rochdale duly converted for a 9-14 Halftime score.

Rochdale opened the second half brightly and determined to pressure the Bury defence, breakdown penalties allowed them to enter Bury’s 22 and following a few successful drives and some passive defence the Rochdale 10 was able to exploit a dog leg in defence to scamper over under the posts which he duly converted to put Rochdale in the lead at 16-14.

Bury then rang the changes using their bench to add a bit more mobility to their lineup, however Rochdale were able to extend their lead after working their way down the pitch through several forward drives to eventually get it wide to the wing who broke two tackles and scored near the corner with the conversion missed this now put Rochdale 21-14 up. They further extended their lead with an offside penalty near the posts putting them 24-14 up with around 15 minutes of time remaining.

With time running out Bury were starting to gain the upper hand in the scrums over a tiring Rochdale pack. The turning point came when the Rochdale No. 8 was yellow carded for leading with an elbow to the head of the Bury defender, quickly followed by another Yellow to the replacement scrum half for a high tackle. Bury worked their way downfield and after getting close a couple of times won an offside penalty 5 metres out. Bury openside Campbell tapped and went and managed to bustle his way over for a score to the left of the posts which Bury didn’t manage to convert leaving them 24-19 in arrears with time running out fast.

Rochdale next saw the return of their players from the sun bin to bolster their defence. Bury managed to get themselves into good positions but some strong defence saw them turned over or forced errors. With what seemed to be their final chance Bury were called back for a forward pass. With a scrum to Rochdale being the final play of the game all they needed to do was clear their lines and victory would be theirs. However in a last Herculean effort by the pack the Bury 8 won a scrum penalty 5 metres out. Quick thinking by scrum half Wood tapped the ball and passed the ball to centre Lawton who spun it wide out to Byrom and onto Schuster whose well timed pass put Teasdale away in the corner to tie the scores at 24-24 with a very tricky conversion to come near the touch line. With ice seemingly in his veins Byrom stepped up and slotted over with aplomb to the jubilation of the Bury faithful and team members with the Bury coaches having visibly aged over the last 5 minutes of the game!

Although it was a strong performance across the board from Bury the Bury coaches awarded Byrom our Man of the Match award for his outstanding work in attack, defence and of course that match winning conversion.
The Lancashire RFU panel awarded Schuster with the official MOTM award for his strong direct running in the outside channels, try and winning assist.

Having being defeated finalists in the last two seasons this was a fitting reward for the teams efforts.

Huge credit is also due to our opponents Rochdale who fought all the way to the end in an excellent game between two very closely matched teams.

Congratulations lads you did it!

Lastly enormous credit must be given to the host club Aldwinians who ran a fantastically well organised day that ran like clockwork

Full Game