Bolton u13 50 v Tyldesley/Warrington 30

Bolton were suffering as the Easter Holiday's robbed them of half the squad, so fielded the bare minimum of 13, with many players playing out of position. Tyldesley/Warrington have combined as the Rugby League season kicked in so it was only their 3rd outing as a combined team. So as the match kicked off it was anyone's guess how it would pan out.
The deadlock was broken after a very even 6 minutes, an opposition scrum on half way was won against the head, scrum half Jack Good nipped round the blindside, made 20mtrs and released Louie Ramm who ran the ball into the left corner. A couple of minutes later a scrum on the Bolton 22 was won even more convincingly when the Bolton pack simply pushed the opposition off the ball, this time Jack found Jake Ludwig who simply jinked his way past the entire opposition defence. Within minutes this was repeated but Jack found fly half Josh Bentley Hughes, who made 30 odd mtrs before offloading to Louie, to see the score move to 15-0. In what in danger of becoming a rout a scrum in the opposition half resulted in Ben Hammond racing thru' a confused defence, 20-0. Credit must be given to the outstanding Bolton scrum; Daniel McGuiness, Matthew Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright, Matthew Philips, Jack Wright & Matthew Cooney simply won everything and half of these lads were playing out of position!
Shortly before half time a scrum on Bolton's 22 was won again and Louie raced towards halfway, unfortunately his inside pass didn't go to hand and in the confusion the opponents sneaked in to make the half time score 20-5. BUT the referee allowed one last play and the kick-off didn't go 10mtrs, Bolton elected for the scrum, Jack noticed the unbalance split in the defence, picked up and shot off towards the left and when tackled 10 mtrs out simply did an inside pass to JBH, so HT was 25-5.
From the restart the combined team had clearly re-thought their tactics and scored early doors after a multi-phase passage of rugby that Bolton never got to grips with. Their kick off found touch, Jack took the quick throw and the ball was transferred thru' 8 pairs of hands to JBH on the right wing, why he was there no one knows but no one cared as he sprinted in for 30-10. Another scrum, another score as Jack again found Louie on the blindside. Unfortunately this was immediately answered when Bolton elected to receive but failed to deal with the kick, 35-15. The was then a fascinating period of around 10 mins when neither side scored but then Bolton scored 3 in little over a minute. Firstly JBH recovered a rather aimless kick and simply ran 90mtrs, from the kick-off Finlay Morgan recovered the ball, passed to Ben Hammond who shredded the defence for his second, he repeated the feat from the next kick-off, Daniel caught the ball, found Jack and whilst Louie & JBH ran dummy lines, Jack simply released Ben who ran the 60mtrs down the blindside.
With 3 minutes left the Tyldesley/Warrington combo repeated this feat of scoring 3 unanswered tries. With both Daniel & Jack injured, no subs and a lot of very tired players they scored a cracking try. Bolton surprisingly decided to receive and the opposition simply ran in down the right when Bolton failed to deal with the kick-off. Even stranger was when they again decided to receive, caught the ball and instead of kicking the ball out decided to run with it, a decision they undoubtedly regretted when the ball was stripped and run in for a final score of 50-30.
All in all a cracking game, the scrum worked well even with new faces, passing was crisper than we have come to expect and if we can keep our concentration for a whole game it bodes well for the future.