Wirral Win First Papa John's Plate Pool Game

This was the first match in a cycle of three games to decide who moves onto the semi final stage of
the Papa John’s competition and today Wirral were playing Syston (near Leicester) from the
equivalent Midlands League. The ground was in good condition given the rain we had earlier in the
week but had dried out over the past 72 hours.
From the game against Rossendale, Wirral made a couple of changes, DAN HARVEY returned to the
wing and SAM VICKERS returned after injury to the second row. Seven substitutes were allowed and
these were JOE FURY, DAN CARROL, HAYDEN LONG, CHRIS DERMODY,WILL MORRIS , JIMMY
ANNETTS ( JA) and making his debut LEON TAHANA, aged 18.
The wind was blowing down towards the clubhouse with the wind crossing the pitch towards the
cricket square and Wirral played towards the main road in the first half.
The match started with Wirral clearing downfield only for Syston to run back 80m where we had no
defence with hooker Dan Hardman scoring and duly converted by Finn Nockles, 0-7 (3 mins). Syston
were much quicker in attacking creating space out wide and only a tackle by TOM COLE prevented
an early second score for Syston. Wirral were building up pressure and had chances from positions
close to the Syston line but could not execute their moves-18 mins.
On 25 mins a further move by Wirral saw ADAM DON running down the field from 50m out only for
the referee to bring down the move as he had inadvertently got in the way of a potential Syston
tackler.
Further play down the left saw the Syston centre, Ahren Crowley score where it appeared that there
had been an error in the play, the try was converted by Finn Nockles, 0-14 (30 mins). The coach,
CRAIG HARVEY then decided to bring on JIMMY ANNETTS and HAYDEN LONG for BEN BROOKS and
SAM VICKERS. Immediately the change worked with JA on his first pass breaking through the Syston
defence to pass onto RHYS JAMES to score under the posts; his tenth of the season, duly converted
by JA, 7-14 (33 minutes). Wirral were now building up the pressure on Syston and another long kick
to touch by JA gave Wirral pressure on the Syston line and after various pushes to the line, ADAM
DON aided by LEWIS HAYES scored 10m from the c/flag and JA converted to tie the scores at 14 each
and this was then the half time score.
The second half started with further pressure from Wirral and had a number of attempts at the
Syston line before the ball came out to TOM AKEHURST who from 10m out ran through the away
defence to score, again converted by JA, 21-14 (42 minutes). Again Wirral attacked but lost the ball;
back came Syston and only a final tackle in the corner from TOM COLE stopped Syston from scoring.
SAM VICKERS and LEON TAHANA came on for LEWIS HAYES and JOE ADNAMS. On 58 minutes,
pressure from Syston after Wirral gave away penalties saw the Syston winger squeeze over in the
left hand corner and well converted by Finn Nockles from the touchline using the wind to equalise
the score at 21 each -58 minutes.
Wirral realised they were under much pressure and worked their way up-field again and pressure
on the Syston line resulted in HAYDEN LONG crossing over the line to increase the Wirral lead to 28-
21 following JA conversion after 26 minutes. MARK WILLIAMS was now substituted by WILL MORRIS
with a change in the backs.
A high tackle resulted in JA failing his kick but 2 minutes later another high tackle resulted in Syston’s
Ahren Crowley being sin-binned, from this position 21m out JA knocked over the penalty to increase
the Wirral’s lead to 31-21 (66 minutes).

The kick off was caught by JA and another long kick downfield again put Wirral on the attack again
and from this position TOM AKEHURST was on hand to score his 20 th try of the season again
converted by JA to increase the Wirral lead to 38-21 (71 mins). At this stage, Wirral gave all their
squad a game with DON CARROL, JOE FURY, CHRIS DERMODY and LEWIS HAYES on for MATT
RINGER, JOE ADNAMS, CHRIS SPEED and HAYDEN LONG a run out in the final minutes of the game.
Syston found pressure in the final minutes of the game and there was some fracas which led to
Wirral losing a player in the 79 th minute. A penalty enabled Wirral to close out the game.
A hard worked win against an unknown side and now we move on to play Derby next week who
were well beaten in their game against Burton, thus the game against BURTON is going to be very
important on the 27 th .
The second team were playing against Anselmians Mavericks (who had a number of first team
players in their team) won 33-31 which is a good performance given a number of the squad were in
the Wirral first team squad. A 3 rd team had a win over Prenton seconds, 23-17 a pleasing aspect
given we had over 56 players out playing this week-end.
Richard McNeil