Alan Stone Lancashire Bowl

In a tough encounter for the home side Bury played Ashton, a team in a league above their own. The quarter-final of the 'Alan Stone Lancashire Bowl' was to provide a disappointing result for the home side in a hard fought battle that ended 14-27 in favour of the visitors.

Bury had started the game the brighter of the two teams and open the scoring on the fifteenth minute with a well worked move through the backline, following a double-loop move, which resulted in a try for speedster Sam Ware. The try was ably converted from a difficult position by fly-half Matthew Hindley.

Having been shocked into action the visitors began to pile pressure onto the Bury defence and finally found a way through on the thirtieth minute with a catch and drive from an attacking lineout.

Ashton were to repeat this ten minutes later in an identical move which saw them increase their lead with another try, yet again failed to kick the conversion.

The two sides turned after half-time with the score at 7-10 and both teams with everything to play for. Ashton continued to drive towards the Bury line continuing as they had finished the first half with a further two tries.

Bury, now 7-27 down, were not to give up and gave themselves a glimmer of hope, following a flurry of astute substitutions, when on the 70th minute a great passing move involving both forwards and backs release winger Ware for his second try of the game. This was converted with ease by James Sedman.

Although they finished the stronger side, Bury were to run out of time and finished the game 14-27. They will now return to the league and travel to Colne and Nelson on January 4th (Kick-Off 2:15pm).

A.Townsend