It was a mild Saturday when Wilmslow turned up to Bolton in their swanky bus to compete at the Theatre of Trees. It wasn’t raining, which was unusual given the week that Bolton had had, and not as cold as people may have thought, the crowd turned up in good spirits with a lot of Bolton supporters as well as good travelling support from Wilmslow.

The game started with an errant kick off from Wilmslow’s 10 which ended up going out on the full. Bolton started by trying to dominate field possession with Ross Hayden (9) and Luke McMahon (10) putting in some beautiful kicks to try and help Bolton play in the right areas of the pitch. The defence from Bolton was staunch with Louie Critchlow and James Evans leading the way with some superb tackling.

Unfortunately the lack of possession in general started to hurt Bolton around halfway through the first half, with some good carrying from the Wilmslow pack and a last ditch try saving tackle from Joshua Holmes (13). Wilmslow ended up on the Bolton 5 metre line where a certain Bolton player gave away an egregious penalty which the referee on the day judged to be yellow card worthy. With the resulting phases of play, despite James Evans (12) and Joshua Holmes's (13) best efforts, Wilmslow ended up in the corner with the first try of the game. Throughout the first half both teams were giving away far too many penalties, with both teams choosing to kick for goal to accumulate some points. Ross Hayden, Bolton's number 9, was quality in front of the sticks, kicking a penalty from nearly halfway. The first half ended 6-11 to Wilmslow.

During the second half the game didn’t change much, Bolton defended as hard as they could, stopping Wilmslow from scoring any tries and Wilmslow did the same. Bolton did have their chances though, Jonny Wallace, Bolton's number 6, ripped the ball with the help of Ross Hayden at the back of a Wilmslow maul. What happened next was beautiful to watch. Clearly Jonny was not used to finding himself in this much space as he accelerated at the rate of a tractor to later be tackled by the Wilmslow covering 10. A quick ball at the help of some good rucking (for once) meant that Bolton were attacking a scrambling Wilmslow defence. The ball was passed quickly out to Bolton's 12 who decided instead of using the overlap in numbers we had, he would proceed to pick the biggest Wilmslow forward up with his handoff and throw him back into the ground. Unfortunately, by this point the fitter Wilmslow side had scrambled back and made their defence impenetrable again.

About 10 minutes into the second half was where things went downhill for the Bolton Boys, they lost multiple front rowers to injuries as well as the only forward who could throw in our lineouts. What resulted from this was Bolton could no longer win either a scrum or lineout, despite Ross Hayden’s best effort to put off the opposition 9 when feeding the ball in by pulling his pants down, nipping his legs, and untying his shoelaces.

Bolton had two penalties in the Wilmslow half giving them the lead, one was an infringement at the breakdown and one was a light scuffle between two players which ended up with Wilmslow’s 13 being red carded.

Although the score was now 12-11 to Bolton and they were a man up, the previously mentioned lack of possession and set piece meant that Bolton were always defending and slowly tired, giving away far too many penalties and thus Wilmslow kicked two of them making the final score 12-17.

Bolton, although defending extremely well and really stepping up to the game posed to them by Wilmslow, gave far too many penalties away, with some saying the number amounted to nearly 40.

Special mentions go to James Evans who dealt with Wilmslow’s backs all day in defence and carried extremely well, Ross Hayden for kicking all of Bolton's points (as usual) and Gareth Evans who, before going off, gave Bolton the best set piece and ball they had all day.

Harrison Management Services LTD MOTM: Joshua Holmes
Coaches MOTM: James Evans

Written by
Joshua Holmes 1st team captain