Been quiet on here of late...

So how did our friends in division 3 find the opening weekend? The good news is every fixture was completed!

We held on for a very tough win against Bolton, a new looking Bolton side from last year, a bigger and tougher pack but perhaps a lack of experience out wide in the backs - nevertheless this was a very hard fought win. If I'm honest I'm not sure we deserved it, we turned into a team of individuals and gave away penalty after penalty for offsides - some lads don't learn. Losing a key halfback after 5 minutes didn't help but no excuse for a below-par performance. Bolton meanwhile showed good shape, defended fiercely, some excellent hands and were well organised.

Looking good for Bury & Bolton - both clubs also fielded 'A' teams before the Div 3 game - Bury ran out 64-16 winners against a very inexperienced Mets side, but putting the result to one side it's great news both club had more than enough for 2 squads each, and this before the Union season or universities finish. So much so we even made [url=http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/mar/03/rugbyleague-superleagueAndy Wilson's write-up in the Guardian[/url.



I'd say the only surprise result was Little Hulton turning over Wigan on their own patch:
Fitton Hill 10 - 28 Langworthy
Widnes Tigers 31 - 10 Pilkington Recs
Bury Broncos 22 - 14 Bolton Mets
Wigan Bulldogs 12 - 32 Little Hulton
Westhoughton Lions 12 - 30 Ashton Bears A
Orrell St James 46 - 6 Burtonwood Bridge

cant comment to much on the match v Wigan Bulldogs but a daft sending off early on in the game to a key ball player did not help. The lads though were in it first half but tired in the second.

Last Saturday we took a very young team up to Oldham and played at Higginshaw's mud bath, sorry pitch v Fitton Hill. When i say young our Half back's were 18 and 19 and our front row 22, 19, 18 and we only had 3 lads over the age of 23 playing! It probably helped as the pitch was so heavy to play on Fitton tired but unfortunately the ugly side to Fitton Hill eventually showed and the game was called early so the score may have been even more had the remaining minutes been allowed to be played. The lads who pulled on the shirt did tremendous not to be intimidated out of the game.

Hopefully we will have a few more lads back for this weekend v Bury as i suspect we will need them. Even though not directly a derby a lot of lads have played with each other at various times so has the makings of a cracker. Personally cannot wait and hoping that will get picked as first time available this season and just happens to be versus my former team and lads played a lot of rugby with.

Haha you not retired yet? Never forget your 95 metre interception at chester only to collapse a metre short of the line. Should be a cracker on Saturday, as you say lots of lads who've played together in the past. We picked up quite a few heavy knocks so not sure how the squad is looking yet, but a few familiar names will be in there!

oh you know how it goes Cronus, doing a spam and having 'one last season'



haha! best non scoring run you will ever see. Had i not thought about passing inside to send one of the young'uns over i would have been home and dry, that will teach me wont it.

Didn't see much from where I was - about 80 metres back thinking 'he'd better bloody score or I'll have to run all that way'.

Wigan Bulldogs 20-18 Ashton Bears A.
Definitely a game of two halves this one but another epic encounter. We (Ashton) started very well & created lots of scoring opportunities. Dropped passes when it would have been easier to score meant we were limited to 6-0 when we could have been out of sight. Credit to Bulldogs though they ground their way back into the game equalising just before half-time. After the break was the opposite as the Bulldogs dominated possession & went into the lead. Two more dropped passes on our line gave them chances which they took to lead 20-6. We finally started to complete & scored two good tries to get us within two points. We finished the game looking likely to score again but ran out of time. Overall pleased with the effort in our first two games after a lot of disruption lately. Another pleasing thing was two of my lads from last week combining to score the winning try in our 1st teams 26-22 victory at Simmies.

Langworthy 8 - 20 Bury

Game called early after a Langworthy lad suffered what turned out to be a broken chest bone (sternum?) and 3 ribs, this following one of their lads kopping either a broken or dislocated jaw.

First half was pretty even, though I know the Bury lads weren't happy with their performance, whilst Langy showed good form and keen defence with their young squad quick off the mark. Bury started the 2nd half strong and began to pull away with some excellent hands and sweeping ball movement, and were pretty well on top before the injury on around 60 minutes. Looks like the result stands.

Ayres Rock - pass our best wishes to your lads mate, and good to see you. Shame you went off at half time, you let Brogan out your pocket!

yeah fair assumption that Cronus. A few gaps opened up in the second half and were fully exploited.

Will do mate. Nath will be fine after the initial prognosis of a possible punctured lung / internal bleeding. discharged Sunday and a fair bit of rest to follow for him. Curt goes back on Friday to see if they can see what he has actually done to his jaw.

Was good to see you too mate. ha! if only i could make the ladies groan like i did him when i tackled him!

Bury Broncos 40-10 Ashton Bears A.
After a good win at Widnes Tigers the previous week, 13 man Ashton went down to a strong Bury side. Ashton worked hard but ultimately tiredness left gaps & the Broncos took their chances in a deserved win.
It would be easy to cite 1st team call-ups and injuries but that would detract from the efforts of the 13 that travelled.. The lads who did go up to the 1st team played well in their win at Haydock which can only bode well for later in the season when the injuries etc start to clear up.

That should be 14-man Ashton, definitely had a sub.



But yes, good effort to come down and play with such a depleted squad, I believe there were several phone calls in the morning for various reasons but your lads fronted up and didn't take a backward step. Your squad was a lot younger than I've seen them before and it told as some of our bigger lads took advantage. For most of the game we were dominant in defence and pretty good going forward, I suppose the scoreline reflects that. A 5-minute spell where some of our lads thought the game was won saw us concede 2 quick tries but they switched on again and closed out for the remainder, running in a few more tries before the whistle.

Cheers to your lads for making the trip, our lot appreciated the effort. A lot of other teams would have conceded.

Well if you call a 16 yr old who'd never touched a rugby ball before a sub, yes we had a sub but let's not split hairs eh?

He's on the team sheet, he's a sub



Anyway, Accrington 24-8 Bury. No excuses, terrible performance from us against a good, well drilled Accy side with a couple of dangerous runners. Mistake after mistake including losing the ball when over the line for a clear try, stupid decisions, chasing the game in our own 20, falling off simple tackles, etc. But for that bombed try and being held up over the line 5 times it would have been closer but our worst performance of the year by some distance and Accy deserved it.

Our 2nds also went down 32-18 against Waterhead A. Was a close game from what I've heard, with Waterhead only pulling away late on. Good performance against a much bigger and experienced side.

Bury vs Fitton Hill

Fitton cried off 30 mins before kick off. Nice one.

Suppose we get the points and they still have to come to our place, but 30 mins? Really?

Little Hulton Reds v Ashton Bears A
This game didn't go ahead because the ref deemed the pitch unplayable at 2:45pm. It was as the warm ups were coming to an end when this was brought to everyone attention and although LH went to get some sand to try to sort the bad patches the game was called off. Really not sure what happens now so we'll see what the league say on Monday. The parts of the pitch the ref wasn't happy with were very bad and had very loose sticky mud that came over the ankles so it was probably the right call. Why it was left so late is another issue though. In other news 1st team beat Clock Face to go top of the premier league for the first time in our history.

Got to say the facilities that LH are getting together are very impressive and their home changing rooms are among the best I've seen, well done to all concerned. LH started the same season we did so it's great to see how they're progressing.

Bolton 34 - 34 Bury

I wasn't there on Saturday but believe it was a pretty gripping see-saw game with the lead exchanging hands several times. We had 25 missing altogether (about 10 from 1st team) but still managed to field a 2 open age teams (2nds lost at Rochdale Cobras A), a great achievement.

Saying that, with ex-Mets players officiating like this were we always up against it!



[i"In touch, sir!"[/i

So, 8/9 games in how do we all see it panning out? OSJ unbeaten, bodes the question...why did they welsh out of promotion? So they can stick 40/50 points on teams every week? Pathetic.

We beat LHR today 23-10. Decent side they've got going now couple of big forwards I've seen knocking around the amateur circuit before.

Our aim this season is a bit of consolidation and bring some of our younger lads in. Think we had 12 under 21 today and a couple of old blokes!

Ashton Bears A 28-18 Pilks A.
1st time we've ever played Pilks at A team level & a decent game.

With the obvious exception of OSJ I think the leagues fairly well balanced with a lot of closely matched teams. The OSJ decision is a strange one & only they'll know why they opted to drop down a division. A lad who played prop for our 1st team in the Prem a couple of seasons ago is playing there so it'll be interesting to see how he's doing when we play them.
Strangest result of the day is Wigan St Cuthberts A putting 40 on Wigan Bulldogs, maybe all their NCL lads haven't drifted away to other clubs after all.
One over-riding thing that I've picked up talking to other coaches is the numbers involved in the game. It seems universal that the number of players available to make it to training & available to play is an issue that's getting bigger.

Think from a Langworthy perspective, so far we are going OK. Should have picked up a couple more wins perhaps but the most encouraging thing has been that we have not been blown off the park by any team with Orrell scoring the most point against us so far at their place and that was only 34. Always was going to be a building and establishing year for us and blooding the young lads coming through.

No surprises to see the teams who are up at the top there and as said by Morning Glory, on the whole a well balanced division with quite a few close games which is what you want and not blow out scores as that's how you do lose players from the teams suffering.

On the point of numbers, it certainly does seem a lot of players are being lost to the game.

From a Bury point of view (even though I've been less involved this year so far), numbers are not currently a problem. After years of struggling to find 17 lads for each game (Ayres Rock you'll remember those days!), suddenly we've seen a huge influx of lads. The weekend we played Bolton and Rochdale A we had 25 missing (10 1st-team) and still field two full squads.

We've also got a good u-18s side ready to break into open-age next year and are trying to field a Masters team at Eccles this weekend, not sure how numbers are looking for that.

Most of the new faces are RU lads, with a few RL lads coming to us from other clubs. We're seeing many of them (especially the youngsters) preferring RL and committing themselves to us over their old RU clubs. That said, our good relations with local RU clubs has been key and we don't want to burn bridges! It also means that while numbers are great, they are often RL novices and can take a while to pick the game up.

No idea why Orrell chose to forgo promotion, seems pointless and not particularly positive for anyone. They may have had concerns over player numbers this year but that doesn't appear to be a problem. That said, other clubs have dropped down divisions over squad concerns so they wouldn't be the first. Other than Orrell and a couple of strugglers it seems to be a fairly even division so far with some good contests.

I would say clubs now need squads of between 30-40 lads to field a team throughout the summer. With holidays, weddings, festivals and weekend work you can have 30 available one week and down to a bare 13 the next. It's a problem with summer I don't think anyone foresaw.

Numbers of registered players doesn't seem to be the issue - we've got more than enough for 3 Saturday teams it's players commitment to train regularly & play at the weekend. As a result teams seem to be having inconsistent 17's and the quality is going down for me. There are some good teams around the divisions but not the depth of quality teams there used to be. If the problems at youth level continue I can only see that continuing too. Maybe it's just a transition period & it will improve but the signs aren't too good at the moment.

That would be the same with us Morning Glory. We have 40 lads signed on but getting a steady 17 is the challenge.

I think the amateur game will continue in this vein for the next 10 years or so because those playing and those at the higher end of the youth game are so use to playing winter and having the summer available. It will be those kids now playing from about 13 and down, where they wont know any different to playing rugby in the summer so natural to continue to do so in the open age.

I don't think though it will ever be like the 80's and 90's (Which i know of) where the game was thriving. Cold Saturday days in the winter there was just nothing to do, these days playing in the summer there is far more options available and only the true dedicated players will be available week in, week out when sun, family days out, drinking and any other things will be more appealing.

Widnes Tigers 17 RAF A Grade 16

We had a great game on Friday evening against the RAF 2nd team. We had several lads decide they'd rather take in the game with a few pints and we found ourselves 16-0 down at oranges, but we fought back to 16-16 and with the actual last kick of the game dropped a goal from the touchline which went over via the post! Remarkable game. We host Bury this week in a 2nd vs 3rd class and having won our last 5 games we hope to keep our good run going!

Big game in Div 3 this week as teams jockey for position, it's Widnes Tigers Vs Bury as 3rd play 2nd!

Who we all taking in this?

I say Tigers by 8!

How bad was that weather today!!

Widnes Tigers 8 Bury 4

Bury scored with their first possession and it was a full on arm wrestle for most of the game. We scored in corner off a kick and converted and added a penalty in the second half. We had Harold Bishop reffing and he had his usual shocker including stopping the game to change his specs! We move up to 2nd now and the top 4 are the same as Div 4 last season!

Langworthy up next for us at home!