Upper Eden 16 – 31 Bolton

The winter has been such that this fixture, Upper Eden’s last game at home this season, was supposed to be in the penultimate round of matches for everybody, but the fact is that Bolton still have in theory three home matches left to play. By now matters at both ends of the North Lancs Cumbria league table should have been more or less settled, but St Benedicts’ progress to Twickenham and the backlog of fixtures meant that over half of the teams in the league still had promotion or relegation interests to be resolved coming into the weekend. Bolton still had slim hopes of returning to Level 6 and, with their hosts defiantly mid-table and with their end of season planned do for after the match, the visitors hoped for a straightforward affair in their last away game. It did not work out that way.

With the surrounding hills covered by snow, a chill wind blowing and the pitch well-grassed but sticky underfoot it certainly did not feel like an end of season fixture as Bolton kicked off. The visitors were quickly into their stride, however, and were awarded an early penalty as UE tried to slow them down at the breakdown. Mike Mills, travelling away with absolutely no regard for his own personal safety on his wife’s birthday, duly obliged by slotting the three points. Upper Eden responded well from the kick off using their main weapon, the driving maul, to good effect and forced a penalty of their own to level the scores. Bolton were undeterred and went back down the other end where a spell of pressure near the UE line ended with Mills feeding Will Bate to crash over under the posts. With the conversion added Bolton looked to build on their lead: the back three of Danny Joseph, Rhys Pritchard and Jack Robinson looked threatening with ball in hand and Louis Critchlow repeatedly made hard yards down the middle, but a lack of accuracy with the pass when well placed and good scrambling defence prevented the scoreboard from moving any further and the home team took heart from this. The UE pack continued driving forward and Bolton increasing fell foul of the referee at the breakdown: the home team kicked a couple of penalties and missed a couple more which meant that at the break Bolton only led 10-9 despite not having had their tryline threatened.

Upper Eden continued to grow in confidence and started the second half the stronger. Within a couple of minutes of the restart they had driven a maul over the Bolton line – it was one of those where the TMO would take several minutes to view all the camera angles without any conclusive evidence, and the Bolton players knew that the not inconsiderable bulk of their skipper was wedged Chris Cockton between the ball and the ground, but the referee rummaged around for a few seconds before awarding the try. The conversion was added to leave Bolton trailing 16-10, but their was no panic in the red and white ranks and they proceeded to put together an half hour of decent rugby. Although their lineout was functioning poorly giving the home team a steady stream of possession and having decided to stop competing at the breakdown for fear of antagonizing the referee further, Bolton’s defence forced the home team backwards, and when they did win some ball over the visitors ran strongly as Critchlow, Niall Murphy, Mike Richardson and Louis Townsend made dents in the home defence. A series of such bursts took the ball to the UE line where James Singleton fed Simon Frost who had run the Wigan St Pats line to crash over next to the ruck. Mike Mills converted and then got in on the act himself when he spotted a gap, shrugged off a couple of desperate tackles and dotted down under the posts. Shortly afterwards Jack Robinson collected a loose clearing kick and wove his way some 40 metres to again score under the posts, with Mills’ conversion putting an end to the scoring. To their credit the home team rallied and finished the stronger, but the Bolton defence held out to seal a hard fought bonus point win.

The win keeps Bolton’s slim hopes alive for another week at least, when the visit of St Benedicts to the Theatre of Trees may finally resolve some outstanding matters. Many thanks to everybody at Upper Eden for their excellent hospitality shown to the sizeable travelling support.

MoM – Louis Critchlow. Kept Bolton on the front foot.