Bolton u13 10 v Sale u13 45

Once again Bolton suffers from missing players

Sale have a big squad and some big players. Bolton sometimes have a big squad but with 7 missing due to illness, injury and a National Robotics Final (?) Bolton only had 16 players. With new partnerships all over the field Bolton kicked off with some trepidation against a quality Sale team.
Within a minute their flying left wing breached the Bolton defence and 2 minutes later their large centre used the same route to score. From Bolton's kick off their full back ran 70 mtrs through some pathetic Bolton tackling and went under to posts and a minute later the left wing doubled his tally. So 5 minutes in Bolton were 0-20 down. Bolton then found some resolve and controlled the game for the next period and were unlucky not to cross the line on 2 occasions. After 11 mins Sale sent a relieving kick to halfway, Louie Ramm had the kick covered but was tackled by two players - without the ball - and a 3rd player ran in whilst the Bolton players and crowd waited for the referees whistle. Bolton elected to recieve, never got out of the 22 and when they conceeded a scrum, a ball that shot thru' the tunnel was picked up by a clearly offside Sale player who cantered in whilst Bolton again waited for the referees intervention. Bizarrely the next 11 minutes were try-less, Bolton very much on top but simply unable to score due to a combination of superb Sale defence coupled with Bolton suffering from white line fever, so at half time the score was 0-30.
The second half was different . With some adjustments to playing positions Bolton tightened up at the back and looked far more potent in attack. After 5 minutes a stunning break from Ben Hammond was stopped by a blatantly high tackle, a quick penalty by Matthew Cooney was stopped by Sale, the referee quite correctly penalised them and when they turned their back on the play Jack Good took another quick tap, found Fafa Mandumgumana who blasted over from 15mtrs. Another 5 minutes of closely contested play saw Sale gradually advance to the Bolton 22 but Nathaniel Wright stripped the ball in a maul, found Louie Ramm who ran the ball in despite the efforts of half the Sale team to stop him. Was an unlikely comeback on? No, firstly Bolton twice failed to convert when they had massive overlaps, then Jack Good came off injured and Bolton lost shape with neither of the regular half backs on. Scrums became uncontested as Bolton ran out of trained props and eventually tiredness caught up with the 16 players who were up against 22. Sale ran in 3 more tries in the last 10mins to give a final score of 10-45.