Snow doesn't stop this juggernaut

On a more than fresh cold morning at Stockport RUFC, the Moor Under 13's assembled to play 2 matches against a touring side from Dublin for 1 half and Stockport in the other. Not only did the players (and spectators) have a bitter east westerly to contend with but snow still covered the majority of the pitch, but was deemed safe to play and the only casualty would be cold hands and a touch of the sniffles from all sides.

Stockport played CUS Dublin first, where the Irish fast running backs put in 4 unanswered tries and prompted the coaches to perhaps do a bit of re-jigging of the starting line up. None was needed, if some thought last week was a performance not up to it's usual high standards, then this was a return to form with the forwards making sure the boys from Ireland would get very little change out of any set piece or even loose play with Moor simply denying their pacey backs of any ball at all.

The only opportunity Dublin got was a penalty on the half way that saw them surge towards the Moor 22, but the forwards rallied, regained the ball and let loose backs. Last week we saw Amjad's pace take all the plaudits in both scoring of tries and his defensive work, this week it was the turn of.... well everyone really. The first 5 tries were scored by 4 different players with the try of the match going to Jacob Hinton which was the result of an excellent counter ruck from the forwards and saw every one of the backs to handle the ball and let Jacob out run the last man to score in the corner.

Considering we only played for a half it was a truly outstanding display from the whole team Once again the forwards came up against a bigger set of lads but out muscled them at the break down with some brilliant counter rucking which resulted in tries for the backs time and time again. You wouldn't have guessed just how cold it really was with the handling skills that produced 7 tries and I personally cannot recall more than 1 or 2 handling errors throughout the 2 matches.

CUS Dublin are a very good side, but they were caught out by a rampant Moor side who took advantage of the fact they had already played a half against Stockport and were still trying to warm up their hands between the games!

Next up was Stockport where we have previously always had tough games....