ROCHDALE TOURNAMENT

Bright sunshine greeted us at Rochdale on Sunday morning, although the wind was blowing hard, we anticipated a good day of rugby.
Only being able to take a squad of 12 players we unfortunately had to leave some of our players that played at the Vale of Lune Tournament at home. We were drawn in a group with Disbury Toch H, Vale of Lune & Manchester, neither of which we had played before, so we didn’t know what to expect.

Bury U9’s 30 – 10 Disbury Toch H

In our first match, the referee blew the whistle and Disbury immediately scored with a strong direct run from one of their players, this was not a good start. From the resulting start Bury then began to control the game with Mikey having a storming game at scrum-half scoring his hat-trick and with William scoring 2 playing at stand-off and Max scoring one from the wing. Bury’s defence improved as the game progressed and only allowed Disbury one more try before the game had finished.

Bury U9’s 0 – 15 Vale of Lune

Having watched Vale play Manchester we knew we were in for a tough game, but the players seemed confident, changes were made to make sure all the squad got an equal chance to play. Vale started well, but with Bury defending well the first half ended with no score. In the second half Vale started to dominate, some excellent tackles, especially from Oscar, Bury continued to hold Vale out until a scrum was incorrectly awarded to Vale near out line, they scored from the resultant play and then score a further two before the final whistle. Bury were unable to keep the ball in the tackle and made too many wrong decisions, yet Vale fully deserved the win.

Bury U9’s 0 – 5 Manchester

This was to be our final match, with both ourselves and Manchester losing to Vale only pride was being played for. Again we were unable to break the defence with an inability to win 2nd phase ball, Manchester had the majority of play, but with some last ditch defending from the whole team, Manchester were only to score one match in the whole game.

Overall we were a little disappointed with our performances, as we know we can play better as a team, but most importantly the players enjoyed themselves in what was a well organised event.