How You Doin?

So no-one told me life was gonna be this way…. The return fixture with Winnington Park was our first game since the Plate defeat against Stockport. We were on a break!

The injury and absence list included Reece (elbow), Sean (shoulder again), Niall (back), Louis (braces!), Tay (ribs) and Donny (puke). Arrold was restraining his father at Wembley. Nice to see the walking wounded down on the touchline to support the team. Oh…. You guys!

That still left us with 23 players. The starting line-up was Jacko, Cam and Stef on the front row, Slasher and MAtty on the second row and Morgs, Dave and Greggo on the back row. G-Man took the 9 slot with Hensy at 10, Joe and Will in the Centres, Jamie and Ben on the wings and Sauna at the back.

Ref for the day was Moggy who had slept in his ref’s outfit after officiating the 4th XV game on Saturday. He will no doubt have it inside out and back to front by next Sunday.

Oh….my…..God! Wirral’s forwards were awesome in the first half. Wirral put together a number of phases allowing Joey to break through the defence and score shortly after KO. Will booted it over for the extras.

Wirral continued to dominate the breakdown creating further scoring opportunities. Will managed to close two of them by scoring in the corners, unconverted.One of these tries was from a great piece of anticipation from Greggo who picked and went and then made a lovely offload to Will who was in the right place at the right time at speed – unstoppable.

Jamie had a chance on the left wing having made a break using his legendary pace and then chipping ahead to beat the defender only for the ball to go into touch. After another attacking phase Wirral found themselves with a huge overlap on the right wing 30 yards out, the ball working its way out along the line until Morgs had a sniff of white line fever and hung on to it just that little too long to allow the defence to come over and smash Ben into touch. Once again Wirral failed to capitalise on their opportunities in the first half. We must be more clinical.

All change for the second half with Big-G joining the front row, Harv and Macerz going into the second row, Karl on for Dave, Twigs on at 9, Woodsy at 10, Conman on the right wing and Ste at full back.

In the second half It’s Like We’re Always Stuck In Second Gear! It may have been a case of white-line-fever but whatever it was , the phases disappeared and we lost our domination of the breakdown. Park came back strong and after the first 10 minutes of the second half Wirral hardly got out of their own half. Could I BE any more disappointed? After a great first half performance all the structure disappeared from our game and Park upped their game to score two and convert one of them.

A win is a win, but we must keep the pressure on and convert our chances into points.

Thanks to Moggy for reffing and thanks to Mark and the guys from Park for a good game and a strong come back.

I’ll be there for you…….cause you’re there for me too.