Bolton 13-33 St Benedicts

On a surface perfect for running rugby with a cold breeze blowing, Bolton welcomed the best team in the league, St Benedicts from Whitehaven, to Avenue Street. At the start of the season this had been billed as the final match, but conditions in the winter meant that both teams had plenty of games still to play. The visitors have a the RFU Intermediate cup final at Twickenham to play in a fortnight's time and Bolton still harboured hopes of a runner's up spot in the league and a potential play off match.

As it turned out Bolton completely fluffed their lines and St Benedicts, although several players away from being at full strength, had to do very little to hand the home team their biggest defeat at this level. From the outset it was clear that Bolton, whether overawed or just having one of those days, were well off the pace: with the ball in hand, passes went astray or were just plain dropped and in defence more tackles were missed in this match than in the previous half dozen put together. St Benedicts, in great form and full of confidence, were in no mood to refuse the opportunities offered and had run in four tries to claim the bonus point before half time.

The Bolton players had no reply other than a single Mike Mills penalty early on in the half following some decent forwards play. The visitors, who had no doubt expected a much tougher examination of their title aspirations, must have been happy to just play good rugby as Bolton's season potentially unraveled in front of them.

St Benedicts scored a further try at the start of the second half and then decided they were far enough ahead and began to think about saving something for Twickenham. Bolton came back into the game to some extent and, although far from fluent, worked a couple of tries for Rhys Pritchard on the wing and went some way to atoning for the shambles of the first half. By this time though the damage had been well and truly done and the result had already been determined.

The result was disappointing in the extreme for Bolton, but with Aspatria travelling to St Benedicts next weekend in a game that would clinch Bennies the league title, Bolton still have an outside shot at the play-off spot if they can pick up maximum points from their final two games.

On a final note we would like to wish St Benedicts the very best in their Twickenham final in two weeks time.

MoM – Rhys Pritchard.