Battering at Bolton

Second String Valiantly Battle To The End

January troubles continued for the second team this past weekend as unavailabilities and players declaring that they could not travel the short distance to Bolton. This led to debuts for Nautical college lads Tom O'Hare, Gok Rajeev and Harry Newton.

The game was also marked by team veteran John Jeffery turning a Half Century, 50 years old and being presented with his Golden Shorts by Skipper Jack Foden before the game. (Not a Golden Shower, as John mistakenly said with a slip of the tongue later on)

Despite leaving late, Fleetwood had a strong showing early on, matching their opponents man for man for a good 10 to 15 minutes before Bolton managed to get over the line, slight controversy as the official missed the knock on while placing the ball.

This only seemed to fire Fleetwood up as they marched back up the field, looking to take the game to Bolton. Big crushing runs from the forwards got young Prop Ethan O'Hara in range. Ethan took the ball in and shook off a few would be tacklers to crash over the line to score his first try this season. Without a recognised kicker in the team, Josh Hall stepped up to do the honours. Unfortunately, he missed.

With this the game was level again at 5 all. Fleetwood looked to push on and look to punish Bolton's mistakes. But Bolton had other ideas and started scoring more and more tries as the game progressed.

At half time, the score still being respectable, Fleetwood looked to do themselves proud and come away with a score line that would reflect the early effort. This was on course to do, until the young official made a questionable decision to send James Gregson to the bin for ten minutes for something that wasn't even a penalty offence.

This misdemeanor killed off any of Fleetwood's hopes of a good second half as Bolton just ran try after try in against the exhausted men in Green and Gold.

Full Time: 85 -5

Scorers

Tries: O'Hara

Despite the result, Chris and myself would like to thank the 15 other lads who traveled away and got the game on and never gave up until the end.

After the game, there was some bad news for the Birthday Boy, as it was revealed that he had broken his nose at some point in the game.

Man Of The Match

After some deliberation with Manager Chris Travis several names came up for the award this week. In the Forwards Ethan O'Hara impressed and in the backs Center Josh Hall and Debutant Winger Tom O'Hare put in decent performances. This week though the award goes to Full Back Jamie Hearne. Jamie made some big hits and carried the ball well. If he could just work at turning up on time, he could become a really good player.

The Weekly Sam Pook Report

Hiding on a boat again, not entirely sure what he does whilst out at sea, but i imagine it's telling bad jokes and not practicing his line out throws.

Next Week

Next week Fleetwood Host Keswick at Melbourne Avenue, 2.15pm ko.

Squad: 15. Hearne; 14. O'Hare; 13. Birks; 12. Hall; 11. Kirkbride; 10. Rajeev; 9. O'Driscoll 1. O'Hara; 2. Heer; 3. Foden; 4. Gregson; 5. Jeffrey; 6. Newton; 7. Blunn; 8. Buzza; 16. Sanderson.