Rochdale Away Match Report

Team: Evan (Captain), Abbas, Adam, Alfie, Cameron C, Cameron M, Flynn, Harry, Jamie.

Firstly thanks to Rochdale for hosting us at short notice. We agreed to play 4 quarters of 10 minutes each with their coach refereeing the first half and my goodself refereeing the second half in what seemed to be a more fraught encounter with several off the ball incidents. I think this is going to be the norm as the season progresses but it was good to see our lads stick up for themselves. I must say however that it is not big and it is not clever to throw the whistle at the opposing coach. Thankfully when the red mist lifted we shook hands and got on with it. I have since given myself a good chastising and have sat on the naughty step for 10 minutes and then sent myself to my room.

The match started slowly on a small narrow pitch with Bury dominating early possession and winning the breakdowns and turnovers. Bury had a scrum 15 yards out and Jamie (playing at scrum half) dummied and ran down the blind side scoring a beauty.

Rochdale to their credit came straight back at us and levelled the scores from a powerful run. When it comes to powerful runs there is no one better than today's man of the match BIG Cameron who scored a wonderful barnstorming try taking on all the Rochdale defence. It showed how we missed him last week as he had a terrific game.

It was also pleasing to see how our boys learned from the game at Leigh by supporting the runners in the maul. Adam in particular deserves credit playing his best game to date really adding his strength to the driving maul and his throwing in at the line out was excellent. Abbas and Harry obviously took on board the pre match training by adding their support to the drives. Alfie was again impressive looking to run at the opposition at every opportunity. His tackling today was immense making some try saving tackles. Cameron M and Flynn also got to see more of the ball today jinking with some really good runs. They will come into their own when we play on a wider pitch with more space. Cameron took on the role of scrum half when Jamie was injured. Flynn got stuck in and really helped out the driving maul. Evan again had a good game scoring 2 tries either side of half time sandwiched by a Rochdale try. What is catching the eye already is the link up between Jamie and Evan, Evans ability to catch Jamie's spin passes on the run is going to be one of our strengths as they cut through the opposition.

Bury ran out 4-2 winners in a much improved performance. Better defence and improved support play and to sum it up BRAVE.
Well done.
PS If any parents want to volunteer to do the match report then please let me know. it will add a different perspective than mine. A bottle of wine for the best report at the end of the season. You can email it to me if you fancy having a go.