A Game of Two Thirds!

A glorious September morning greeted both teams as they arrived at Green Lane for the first game of the season. The first team pitch was in great condition thanks to our new star groundsman and coupled with the weather offered up the prospect of some adventurous and attacking open rugby.

A mixture of optimism, excitement and nervousness seemed to be the order of the day for the boys in the changing room before the game. Could they match or even improve on the standards they set themselves last season.

The match was marred throughout by disputes with the home referee from the travelling contingent which led to a stop start game as the referee explained his interpretation of the laws to Eccles players and coaches on a frequent basis. This probably contributed to an at time fractious affair. Matters came to a head in the second period, of a scheduled three, when Tank decided unwisely to seek some of his own retribution after seeing his team mate receive a bit of rough stuff. The referee had no option but to send Tank for an early bath, memories of Bury 2 seasons ago came flooding back, although this one was perhaps more deserved despite Tank's protestations of "I didn't do nothing tho!"

Eccles had a big combative forward pack that were keen to smash anything in their way at rucks and they delivered a good early season test for our forwards on dealing with physicality and delivering quick ball to our back line to do what they do well.

The whole squad played their part as they ran in 10 unanswered tries in 40 minutes of play. Perhaps the best try of the day involved a hooker scissoring with a prop who then threw a miss pass to a centre who ran in a great try and testament to the heads up rugby the coaches have been advocating all summer in training. Don't forget your day jobs though forwards!!

The type of expansive rugby played was shown by one winger running in 4 tries, well done David, and 5 different scorers on the day. Lots still to work on in training this week as we keep on improving.

A few quick mentions

- Great to see Dallas make his debut, he was threat all day at centre and offers the team a lot of go forward
- Well done to Cameron and David for their awareness and finishing, respectively which meant they were named joint Man of the Match
- Dom and Farron had encouraging first games of the season and both showed their strength at scrum time in particular
- Thanks to Blake for coming down to support the boys and hopefully we'll see you out on the pitch soon

It was great to see there was no hangover from Carry On Camping!!