Under 14s hold on to progress in NWC Cup

Chester faced a long trip to Heysham in the round of 16 in the NWC cup.

Chester started brightly controlling the attack ruck speed and created early pressure in the first set which ended with a Chester player bundled into touch near the Heysham try line. Harry MacMillan forced an error from heysham early in the set before Liam Walker was held up over the line by the Heysham defence. Ethan Bainbridge then ran a great line to crash over the line to open the scoring.

Dan Tabberer and Harry Macmillan then had some great drives to set a solid platform in the Chester half before Henry Jones broke through on his own 40 before racing away to score his first try of the season. From the resulting kick off Carter Foster almost broke through the line before making a error at the PTB. Solid defence from Carter and Ethan forced Heysham into touch to get the ball back in Chester's hands and the impressive Ethan Bainbridge broke through to extend the lead.

Solid defece by Dan Tabberer saw him bundling Heysham players into touch and gaining possesion for Chester. Alex Woodbury then got on the scoresheet with a nice team try as Chester started to play with confidence and expression throwing the ball across the park and offloading in tackles to keep the pressure high on Heysham, unfortunately the goal kickers left their boots in the car it seems as we converted no tries so the scoreline was at 16-0 as we approache half time.

Heysham then started to wake up and some poor static goal line defence from Heysham saw them grab their first try before the applied more pressure on the Chester defence before Matt Richards stifled a dangerous kick to finish the half with Chester leading 16-6.

Chester kicked off the second half and sloppy defence in the middle of the park saw Heysham score very early in half and this gave them confidence forcing a couple of errors from Chester with Knock ons and missed tackles before Heysham scored again to take the lead after kicking all conversions 16-18.

A penalty to Chester for obstruction from Heysham gave Chester good field position and strong drives from Theo McAndrew and Haig Bainbridge moved Chester to 10 metres out before Liam Walker drove over the line with Alex Woodbury adding the extras to allow Chester to regain the lead.

From the kick off Henry Jones drove it in strong before seeing a Heysham player steal the ball in a 1:1 tackle before Henry pounced back on him to take the ball back and regain possession. Some excellent passing saw Ethan Bainbridge in space on the left edge and he raced away to grab his third try and he added the crucial extras himself.

Going in to the last 10 minutes of the game and Heysham grabbed another try which could have been held up over the line but the Heysham player was strong enough to get the ball down and score, they missed the conversion so the score was 28-22 with a few minutes remaining, Chester forced a error deep in their own half and Dylan Yearsley drove for 40 metres to take his team out of trouble. Heysham got the ball back and a good defence set saw them kick a high bomb which was gathered really well but an attempted offload went wrong on zero tackle and Heysham had the ball in the Chester 20.

The Coaches nerves were shattered at this point as HEysham battered the Chester line and the tackling was ferocious trying to defend the try zone but the Chester players got sucked in and Heysham exploited the overload situation to score in the corner with 30 seconds remaining, the Heysham kicker who was MOM and a real pain for Chester all game stepped up knowing his kick would take the game to golden point, fortunately for Chester his kick was nudged just wide.

From the resulting Kick off Heysham kept the ball alive well with mutliple drives and offloads and Chesters defence was stretched and scrambling but an outstanding smother tackle from Luke Johnson killed the game and Chester celebrated winning 28-26.

Soe outstanding performances from Chester saw the Heysham coaches name Dylan Yearsley, Alex Woodbury and Haig Bainbridge as their Man of the Matches with Chester coaches picking out the Hattrick hero Ethan Bainbridge.

Chester have drawn Burtonwood Bulldogs in the Quarter Final in a repeat of the opening league game of the season.