Four Tries, Five Points

They were never in any danger of making a banana skin of this game but it wasn’t their finest performance of the season, far from it. Four tries though were enough to take the maximum number of league points available.

Coach Rick Jones was pleased with the outcome and that the side had been sufficiently motivated to hunt down the fourth try, when it would have been easier to have taken the foot off the pedal and to just coast home. But, he was disappointed by the way that the Wolves had allowed themselves to be dragged down into a shapeless niggle of an affair, particularly in the second half, when prop Jordan Ayrey had to leave the field with a recurrence of his shoulder problem and scrum half Andy Walker had to follow him with a painful looking bang on the knee. They were replaced by Mark Williams and Ollie Wilkinson. On the touchline though, Cheshire selector Dave Partington had enjoyed the way the Wolves were playing, commenting afterwards that they were always trying to do the right things, even though the execution was sometimes lacking. He seemed to concur with the opinion that this is a Wolves outfit, which if it can keep hold of most of its players and add a little more strength in depth next season has the potential to move up to the next level.

Fleetwood will be moving back down after just one season to the North Lancs and Cumbrian League. Just one win in twenty four outings tells its own story. They will not have been the first club to find the step up to North 1 West rugby to be more demanding than expected. It happened to Kirkby Lonsdale but they bounced back up again after a season’s absence and have been much better prepared this time round. It also took Wilmslow not so long ago at least three attempts to adjust to this league. Fleetwood’s officials though were sanguine about the possibility of coming straight back up again, believing that it will take longer for their players to regain their confidence after the batterings they have received this season. For this game they had had to make ten changes from the side that had played Widnes the week before.

The Wolves kicked off into the face of a stiff North Easterly. It wasn’t bringing any snow with it and it was dry but it was freezing cold. Several spectators, your correspondent included, found that the best place for relief from the biting wind was behind the goal line at the car park end of the ground, in front of a barrage of portaloos, erected for the following day’s Wilmslow Half Marathon. It’s possible that the Fleetwood players had also come to the same conclusion as they spent most of the first forty minutes deep in their own half.

The Wolves weren’t quite purring like a finely tuned Mercedes during this period but they were certainly going through the gears as they tried to break down a spirited Fleetwood rear guard. It was ten minutes before a Bob MacCallum penalty gave his father on scoreboard duties anything to do. Moray MacCallum was still hanging the ‘3’ digit in place, when Wilmslow scored their first try, giving him something more to do. From the restart, scrum half Andy Walker had decided to put boot to ball but confounded everyone when the wind blew it backwards into the arms of Sam Cutts, today playing extremely well in the centre. Cutts decided to run and then to pass. Mike Black ran hard with it into the Fleetwood half before throwing an abominable pass in the general direction of Lawrence James’s boot laces on the right wing. Before the ball bounced, James gave it a good hoof and when it kindly sat up for him to collect twenty yards further on, he found himself with an easy run in under the posts. The visitors from Fleetwood were not amused but when you’re out of luck…………………..

Rick Jones then got a Yellow Card for what looked like a verbal difference of opinion with referee Slater. The Wolves general dominance of proceedings though were not much affected by his absence but they still couldn’t put the final pieces together. A rare sortie into Wilmslow territory from, a stolen lineout, led to Fleetwood’s Ryan Riches having a chance to reduce the deficit and with the wind behind him, he should maybe have made more of the opportunity but he didn’t. Then on the stroke of half time, the Wolves won a good attacking lineout deep in Fleetwood territory. Black joined the line at pace and when he was held up just short, the ball was recycled for Walker to apply the coup de grace, burrowing low through a forest Fleetwood defenders’ legs.

The Wolves could have been out of sight by half time and the expectation was that MacCallum would use the breeze to kick Wilmslow into good attacking positions so that the fun could really start. Up to a point, that’s what happened and a third try soon came along when the Wolves scrum pushed Fleetwood back over their own line for Walker to get the touchdown. What wasn’t on the script was that the visitors would start to disrupt the Wilmslow scrum and lineout and with the help of a series of penalties find the confidence and wherewithal to run the ball back at the Wolves defence. They may only have created one clear cut scoring opportunity but they most certainly bottled up the Wolves for long periods and forced them to defend with some urgency. Time was running out when a clean lineout win put MacCallum and the backs away in clear space. Ollie McCall joined the line and finding the Fleetwood defence absent, he just raced through the gap for try number four. Whether there would have been just as much space for McCall if the forwards hadn’t all got involved in the kind of mass brawl, which rugby players so enjoy, is open for conjecture. Referee Slater though was up with play and awarded the try, almost certainly oblivious to the skirmish that was going on behind him.

Afterwards Jones picked out Sam Cutts for a really good showing in the centre and also commended the work of his fitness coach Craig Cooper, who although side lined from playing for most of the season, has enthusiastically kept the side’s physical conditioning up to the mark. It has shown in recent weeks.