Bolton Complete Their First Double

Going into the game, Bolton were in danger of being caught by the chasing pack and allowing Carlisle to move into a double figures point gap over the Cherry & Whites. The task was made even more difficult when their preparation was disrupted by somebody discovering that the strip had been left back at Avenue Street.

In the fixture earlier in the season Bolton had dominated in the set piece, to which Carlisle had no answer. It appeared the Carlisle coaches had gone away and worked on it as they took the upper hand in both scrum and lineout for the majority of the game, albeit helped somewhat by the swirling wind in the lineouts.

Bolton immediately put themselves under intense pressure with a poor kick off that did not travel 10m. Carlisle opted for the scrum and dominated the possession for the majority of the half through good use of their forward pack. Despite their forward dominance, the home side backline just did not seem to be firing and a series of one dimensional attacks were relatively easily snuffed out by Bolton’s best defensive effort of the season so far.

On the other hand, Bolton did not seem to be able to link any real phases of play together and looked very much like a team low on confidence given their lowly league position. Their half was interrupted early on when Gaz Pritchard had to be taken from the field for treatment on a nasty cut – a sign of the workload the back row of Ash Cooper, James Brodie and Pritchard were getting through in defence. Nick Sandbrook earned an early introduction to the match and made his presence known with some strong hits and useful turnovers.

Despite Carlisle having the majority of possession they really couldn’t make it count and against the grain it was Bolton who took the lead and the only points of the half after stringing several phases together they earned a penalty in front of the posts which Mark Doherty slotted for a 0-3 scoreline.

Gaz Pritchard returned to the field to play out the rest of a half that was littered with mistakes from both teams, but that Carlisle continued to dominate in terms of possession and Bolton continued to dominate in defence.

The second half kicked off in much the same vein with Carlisle on the front foot in attack, although they were experiencing slightly less dominance in the scrum thanks to the introduction of Veteran Gareth Evans at hooker for the slightly younger Jon-Paul Hardman.

The efforts in the first half were starting to take their toll on Bolton and the Carlisle 12 slipped a number of tackles to set up an attack just 5m out from the Bolton tryline. Despite their best efforts, the Cherry & Whites line was broken and Carlisle went over for the first try of the day with the conversion kicked to take the game to 7-3.

This appeared to spark some life into what had been a dismal Bolton attacking effort and the forwards and backs began to link some phases of play together. After earning good territory Bolton managed to give the ball away at the lineout and Carlisle looked to launch an attack, however Bolton were on hand to apply the defensive pressure once more and a dropped ball was hacked through by Doherty, followed up by Jack Robinson who poked it through for Mike Richardson to dot it down on his first game back from injury. Despite the windy conditions, Doherty made no errors in converting the score from out wide to make the score 7-10.

Carlisle took to their forwards for the final 20 minutes and tested Bolton’s mettle constantly, earning two kickable penalties that would have won them the game, but without a strong kicker both opportunities were spurned letting Bolton off the hook.

Bolton must know look to kick on from this result on the road when they host Vale of Lune on Saturday. Vale have lost their last 5 games and with the teams surrounding Bolton all playing difficult fixtures, it is a great opportunity to increase the gap on the bottom 3 and close the gap on Carlisle.