Boro girls make mark at festival
YET again Littleborough Rugby Club put on a fabulous Sunday of entertainment, fun and friendship as the 2018 Girls festival came to town.
With more than 400 players and their families from all over the North of England making the trip to Rakewood, the Girls festival stood out as one of the best events this calendar year, despite the dreary weather.
Boro’s under 13 girls held their own after having to split into two teams – Littleborough Pinkies and Warriors – as they came up against some really tough opponents.
They scored tries against all teams at the festival including Sandal, West Park Leeds, Old Crosslians and Preston Grasshoppers.
Morgan Pearson was a rock at the heart of the defence and provided the platform for Georgia Crossley, Niemh Clegg and Lucy Gregg to demonstrate their excellent attacking prowess.
As a result of this the whole team was rewarded by winning the fair play awarded by the referees.
At the same time, the U15 Girls also had amazing turnout at the festival, managing to enter an extra team to replace a no show.
Putting out an A and B team, the B team played really well with lots of learning from the new players. Unfortunately they did not make it through to the finals.
Boro’s A team smashed the pool winning all four games but got unlucky in the semis.
In the eldest of the Boro girls sides, the Under 18s were superb in the group stages, drawing with Eccles as well as beating Old Crossleyans and a combined Selby/Hull team.
However like the younger u15s they went out in the semi finals, losing to eventual winners Ellesmere Port.
It was spectacular day performance in what was, for some of the girls, their last games with the u18s.
Sisters Olivia and Georgia Turner broke the line well and proved very hard to put down.
Chloe Boardman used her pace and nibble feet to run rings round her opponents and make great space for her team mates.
Megan Dickinson put in a very accomplished performance in her first appearance at hooker, instead of her usual scrum half position.
Backs Hannah Mills and Jess Chadwick both returned from long layoffs and were awesome in exploiting lots of gaps in the opposition defence.
Hannah was making her first appearance in the black, green and pink of Littleborough for the first time in two years.
Summer Harris was her usual excellent self in both attack and defence. Newbie Aimee Thorneycraft is always improving after joining late in the season and didn’t look out of place against some experienced team mates Special mentions go out to Georgia Simm, Emily and any of those that travelled for the day from West Park and Liverpool St Helens.
Across the county in Kirby Lonsdale, Littleborough’s Under 16 boys’ produced another sensational performance by taking victory 81-10. The lads were devastated at last week’s semi final defeat and certainly showed the week before was a blip as they made the 164-mile round trip completely worth it.
Further south, there was an outstanding display from the U12s who travelled to Manchester to play a quality Heaton Moor side.
From kick off the boys showed real intensity and drive to not give them time to settle or get any rhythm while in attack great work by Boro’s scrum half Harvey Johnson and 10 Harry York gave the boys outside them plenty of running space to roam as Bailey Howarth and Adam Gibson made use of this to great effect.
A lot of hard work by the forwards always help the backs to play their natural game and today they did just that.
Mind you the forwards did register one try through Oliver Fell-Gordon crashing through on a short ball burst. A good couple of ankle tap tackles kept Boro looking like comfortable winners as the ever improving under 12s put together a complete team performance to make for happy coaches.
That result was topped off with the older U13s also recording an impressive 60-20 victory away at Kirkby Lonsdale RUFC. The boys showing off their tour tT-shirts kindly donated by Brad Baxter of Baxters builders.
Enduring just as dreary weather was the Littleborough’s in form junior side the under-10s and once again they didn’t disappoint again.
They did exactly what was asked of them and then some. Weather conditions were not perfect but it didn’t stop this mini team of the great Green Army showing their colours!
Trafford MV are a well drilled team, but when it came down to it, the Boro minis showed them what they where made of. The match at times became heated, especially in the last 10, but the core values where upheld, frayed tempers where held and dealt with correctly on the pitch and replied in a sportsmanship like way. Through it all, Trafford could not stem the flow of Littleborough tries that kept coming.
The Under 8 side at the Preston Grasshopper mini festival played five matches, winning four and losing the final by one score.