Another tough day on the road

Another scratch Helsby travel to one of our closest rivals, Ellesmere Port. With an hour to go before kick off the starting line up was still not known, but that's the fun of 2nd XV rugby!

Once the line up had been established it was apparent that Helsby should have had enough quality on the pitch to upset the Port side sitting at the top of the table. The opening few minutes where a tense affair with Helsby making an early break down the left channel with Walker, Rutter and Glynn linking up in broken play. This was snuffed out as Glynn was bundled into touch before he could offload inside.

Port then deployed there main attacking weapon. A throw to there front jumper, who won everything that went near him all afternoon, and
a powerful well controlled driving maul. Helsby failed to deal with this and found themselves on their own line and then under the post talking about how to stop this tactic.

Unfortunately for Helsby they struggled to cope with this and found themselves spending large chunks of time in there own 20m because of it.

Half time came and Helsby were down 12-0 despite being the better team with ball in hand.

The second half continued much like the first with Robinson having a great game at 10 with both ball in hand and from the boot. Bagley, making his debut, was too much to handle for the EP defence, his strong running exploiting holes in the defence or making them! The story of the day was one of missed opportunities as so many balls went to ground when tries where begging.

On any other day either team could have score a hat full of tries but the determination of both sides defences prevented this.

A 14-15 fight erupted 12 minutes from time (would have been 15-15 but the scrum half returning from injury never managed to get there until it was over). Players gathered round after Walker unceremoniously dumped the EP scrum half in to touch and the referee deemed Andy Birchal had thrown a punch, his first since nursery school in 1979, and gave him a 10 minute rest.

Paul Bagley was a deserving man of the match with tough competition from Robinson. Strong performances from the father, son Rutter combination also deserve special mentions as does the evergreen Blout, although his dropped ball in 20m of space will be one he remembers for a little while yet.