Rossendale put to the sword
LITTLEBOROUGH Under 10s made the short journey to the always welcoming Rossendale RUFC with a 16-player squad.
A slow start from the Littleborough boys and girls gave the home team opportunities which they took and scored.
Despite this, Littleborough eventually found their rhythm and tightened their grip on the loose ball around the rucks giving the scrum half quality possession.
From one such occasion, a strong run from Jess Smith saw her crash over the line to open the scoring, quickly followed by more tries from Harry Baron and Finley Cannon.
In the second half Boro executed some quality set plays. The whole pitch was being utilised as the ball regularly found it’s way out to the wings. Thomas Inman, Leo Clegg, Mason Hoyle and Ryan Baxandall all profited from the visitors expansive game plan.
This past Sunday’s biggest take away for the U10’s and the biggest delight for the coaches was the huge amount of team work and communication that gave the Boro boys and girls the rewards of victory and the 14 tries to 12 scoreline they so richly deserved.
At the very same ground Littleborough’s Under 11s were unfortunate to come away from Marl Pits with a narrow 11-9 defeat.
As we see across the sporting world, the result does not always reflect the hard work and effort that was put in.
Defeat as they is a cruel teacher.
Rossendale were physically a big side and they led 7-3 going into the break. Littleborough’s juniors were unperturbed as they regathered themselves, supported each other, put in some big tackles and scored some great tries! One particular passage of the game played witness to some outstanding scramble defence, where Boro U 11s pushed the hosts off their try line, while they camped on onemetre out for a number of phases.
As the game started to draw to a close in the last quarter, Rossendale were in the lead at 10-5.
Again the opposition felt the brutal force of the U11s attacking game as they scored four tries in the closing minutes of the match.
Another for Rossendale sealed a narrow two score victory at the final whistle.
Well done to Charlie Slade who made his debut today and put in some great tackles, and Billie Eastwood for Player of the Match for his tackling too. While there has to be mentions for the five different try scorers during the afternoon: Ellis Johnson (4) Taylor Ward (1) Harrison Dickinson (2) Daniel Taylor (1) Callum Sharrocks (1)