Didsbury Toc H u12's 10 v Bolton u12's 55

After a 6 weeks lay-off, we wondered whether the lads would remember how to play and what the rules were, fortunately we had no worries on that front, but a combination of injuries, illness and birthdays meant we only had 15 players, so everyone got at least 30 minutes game time. Given those missing it also meant some players had to play in less usual positions and credit to them, they all got stuck in.

Louie Ramm opened the scoring on 4 minutes with a great run showing his strength and speed, shortly after Harry Connor finished of a great display of passing and and support play to dive over the line. Next it was the turn of Billy Burrows again supporting well to get his first try of the season. On 12 mins Josh Bentley side stepped his way through to dive over the line, a minute later Callum Purnell finished of a great display of passing the ball along the line to dive over. A great solo run from Josh Bentley saw him get over the line for his second but much of the credit must go to Matthew Stephenson, who started the move by ripping the ball from an opponent who was about 18" taller, the look on the lads face was worth the admission money alone. Just before the whistle Didsbury managed to get the ball out to their pacy winger to run in their only try of the half.
Half time Bolton 30, Didsbury 5
The second half started off with Matthew Philips supporting the forwards racing past the defence to score, Louie Ramm then ran in another 2 tries to make his hat trick, a feat repeated when Josh added his 3rd. Didsbury then scored a cracking try, their speedy winger flying down the right wing covered by 3 defenders, only to perform a series of side-steps and go in. Ashton Mukiibi had his best game of the season and everyone was delighted when he finished off the tries by again showing good support and an unexpected turn of speed to touch down, a cracking team try made for Ashton when Jack Good & Jake Ludwig ran superb decoy lines to drag the defence away.

Mention must be made of Joshua Dickens & Evan Dare both putting in huge shifts in the breakdowns, Luke sealed up the right wing tackling everything and was unlucky not to score for reasons that were not clear. Brandon & Jayden, both relatively new, were also superb, their positional play was phenomenal and on other days both could have scored.

A massive thanks to the whole squad today, they all played brilliantly, supporting each other both in attack and defence. From a coaching point of view it was so pleasing to see the lads helping each other, talking to players who were having to play out of position. It was summed up by the fact that we gave away hardly any penalties, particularly none for offside