Caldy Crowned League Champions After Victory Over Wirral

Wirral started the game brightly with the Wirral pack appearing to have the upper hand. Strong defence from Caldy, however, all too often resulted in the ball being lost in the tackle. We then presented Caldy with 3 gilt-edged scoring opportunities. Caldy are too good a side to turn down such chances and ran in 3 tries. Two of the tries were converted and, with the addition of a penalty, Caldy had soon established a 22 point lead.

Despite the deficit, the mood in the Wirral camp at half time was still positive. Cut out the silly errors and we could get back into the game. We again started the half strongly and Jack Quinn soon got us on the scoreboard as he picked up from the back of a five metre scrum and forced his way over the line. The Wirral comeback then appeared to come to an abrupt halt as Jimmy Annetts was sent off for what the referee perceived to be a deliberate head butt. The situation was then made worse when, within minutes, a strong Caldy attack resulted in a well worked try in the left hand corner to once again increase the lead to 22 points. On the touch line hopes of a comeback were momentarily replaced by fears that Caldy may now run away with the game. Fortunately the players had other ideas. Despite being a player down, they stepped up a gear and proceeded to dominate the last quarter of the game. Tries from Craig Dolan and Jack Quinn (again) soon reduced the deficit to 15 – 27. With 1 minutes to go a superb individual run from Lloyd Hayes ended with him scoring under the posts. The try was duly converted and the deficit was down to 5 points. Caldy appeared to be wilting under pressure as the kickoff failed to go 10 metres and Wirral were presented with one last chance to attack. From the scrum, the ball was quickly released to the backs but the Caldy defence held firm and the final attack was snuffed out.

Congratulations to Caldy on the victory and, more importantly, on winning the league. They have only lost one game this season and clearly are worthy winners of the league title. Over the last few years there has been a very close and intense rivalry between these two sides. There is one more chapter to come as we meet again next month in the semi-final of the Cheshire Cup. It is sure to be a cracking game!

Graeme Roberts
Colts Manager