Another Saturday and another tough challenge for Burn Seconds. Sedgley Park, 7th in the league, were coming to Ramsgreave and the squad were quietly confident about extending their winning run to four games. Due to a number of senior players being absent through first team call ups and injury, Burn selected a very young backline to compliment the slightly more experienced pack. A number of Senior Colts stepped up to make their debut starts for the Second team including Will Farnworth and Tom Samuels. An exciting selection of backs with more fancy footwork than Frank Sinatra!

The game got off to a slow start but all that soon changed with the early departure of Paul Gregson, needing to rapidly leave the pitch and in fact the club due to his wife going into labour. We wish them all well and hope his afternoon was as eventful as ours! Shortly after that Danny Khan was carried from the pitch with a twisted ankle and with 20mins on the clock Burn had already used two of their three substitutes. Burn responded really well to the early disruption and settled down to the job at hand. Other than Mr Angry, Sam Fox taking an enforced 10mins break in the sin bin for mouthing off at the referee, the first half was a largly uneventful one in rugby terms. The rugby was played in the centre of the pitch with neither side really able to make much progress into the red zone. The half ended all square at 3-3 thanks to a Nick Archer penalty kick.

The half time talk revolved around patience and playing the phases through the forwards. An inspirational substitution was made by captain turned coach for the day Dave Eccles, bringing on the hard running (and quite worried!) Sam Morgan, making his comeback after a year on the sidelines with a knee injury. Sam made an immediate difference running straight and holding the defence before spreading the ball wide for the fast lads to exploit the space. The first try came on 45mins and was scored by debutant Will Farnworth. An excellent try, well worked and beautifully executed. Again Nick Archer converted and Burn had their tails up and were starting to believe they could win the game. !0mins later the second of Burns three tries was scored by the ever lively Jurgen Munch. Again a well worked move was executed with Munch finding the gaps in the defence after some more good work in the backs. This time the conversion was missed and the score remained at 15-3.

The forwards haven't always had much of a mention in the match reports this season but on this occasion they do need praise for the platform they provided at set pieces. They worked hard to provide quick clean ball and dominated Sedgley at the scrum. On 65mins a solid performance from the hard working and ever present Mike Dixon was capped with another well worked try. Some good work around the base of the rucks led to quick ball and Mike Dixon popped up in support to score out wide. The conversion was kicked and the score moved on to 22-3. Sedgley did manage to score a consolation try late on after some repeated infringments from Burn players led to a string of penalties and territory, eventually leading to a try with 5mins to go.

The game ended 22-8 with a good overall team performance. Many of the lads are now working hard in training during the week and it is showing in games on a Saturday. As a squad we believe that we can win games on a Saturday and are beginning to gel well as a squad. Again please can I encourage all players to get down to training as there is definately competition for places in the team. Well done on another great result and our continued march up the table.

Preston away next week. A big local derby game that we would love to win!