Bolton Narrowly Beaten by Upper Eden

The match was a tightly fought encounter with both sides trying to run the ball, Bolton continued to try and penetrate the UE defence with pre-thought moves but at times the visitors defence was much stronger... especially around the ruck area which for the majority of the game BRUFC failed to get a grip of. Hard hits and solid runs by players such as Lloyd Green kept UE on the back foot but BRUFC's looseness in the open started to show after a short time.

Points were exchanged between the two sides in the first half, slack defending allowed UE to score twice, where Bolton scored a great TEAM try which was finished by Stuart Evans and converted by Danny Barlow. Barlow also kicked a penalty from inside the UE 22m, in a skillful bout of trickery he managed to hit both posts and skim the cross bar.

Half Time score: 10 - 14

It took BRUFC over 10minutes in the scond half to start playing as they did the week before, where BRUFC controlled the game for the majority of the 2nd half. Two great tries were excellently converted by the on form boot of Dierdre Barlow, Martin Plimmer finished off a crisp backs move to score at the Club house end and move Bolton ever closer to sealing victory and Ryan Wignall showed it does pay to stand lazily on the wing as he outsprinted the majority of the UE backline to score a fantastic prop forward try.

With these two tries almost cancelling out UE's two tries (1 conversion) in the 2nd half. With the match tantilisingly on edge at 24 - 26 in UE's favour BRUFC started to take advantage of UE's tiring backline, Veteran Mikey Singleton and his young apprentice Pete "the meat" Marriott controlled the game well from stand off as UE felt the pressure and conceeded silly penalties. One penalty sat in front of the UE posts and before a decision could be made to let the in form Barlow slot the 3 points a quick tap was taken, the ball lost at the next ruck and a golden opportunity wasted....this situation was made worse 2 minutes later when another silly penalty was given away by a BRUFC player and UE extended theyre lead by kicking the another 3 points.

Bolton MOTM - Mark Crow (almost perfect line out throwing, very good all round game....shows it sometimes pays to get away with murder - literally)

Final Score: BRUFC 24 - 29 Upper Eden