Boro finishing with a flourish
LITTLEBOROUGH RUFC kept up their superb end to the season with a victory at home to Eccles RUFC at Rakewood Road.
It means the hosts have won their last four games in a row with just one match remaining this season, leaving them 11th in the North Lancs/Cumbria table.
The game began with Eccles on top, and early on they took the lead when their centre threequarter crossed the line under the posts for the first try of the afternoon, with the conversion also added to put Eccles ahead inside the first 10 minutes.
At the restart a good distance kick downfield by Boro and an excellent quick follow up by Josh Park tried to start a Boro attack, but back came the opposition with a good break by their number 10.
Littleborough wouldn’t be denied though as a great attack started by Davd Kearns led to scrum half Chris Kolbuck going over for Boro’s first try.
Immediately afterwards the visitors went over again for another conversion try but it was proving to be end to end stuff as Boro then gained their second try by Jack Whittles, this time converted by Walton.
On 30 minutes it looked like Eccles would score again as virtually all of their players found themselves in Boro’s 22 metres area, and it proved to be the case as they finally went over in the corner for their third try and followed it with an excellent conversion.
Back again came Boro up into the opposition 15 metres area where Matthew Goldthorpe made a good block on an attempted defensive kick, before Chris Roberts almost made a break to score.
It wasn’t Boro’s half though, as right before the break the visitors gained the ball and made another break to cross the line for their fourth converted try, making the score 28-12 at half-time.
It appeared that the result wasn’t going Littleborough’s way, but they were given hope early in the second half when second rower Murphy Holt crossed the line for Boro’s third try, with the conversion added to reduce the deficit to 28-19.
That try gave the home side confidence and low and and behold they quickly followed that try with another when Goldthorpe produced a great runaway try with was converted by Walton to make the difference only two points.
It was now a complete game change and the comeback was achieved when half-time substitute Henry Ashworth went over for another Boro try to take the lead and make it 31-28.
A great deal of the great comeback by Boro came from the terrific performance of their scrum half Kolbuck, who was always quickly onto the ball and feeding his teammates, which again brought another try by Holt to extend their lead.
Boro kept applying the pressure late on and their opposition just couldn’t cope, and with only 10 minutes play left Boro crossed the line again for their seventh try, this time by Adam Sanderson to end quite a memorable game.