Swarm kick start their season

Rochdale Swarm had their busiest ever weekend of tag rugby last week with a festival in Castleford on the Saturday and a home Tag Merit League fixture on the Sunday.

Saturday saw the Swarm as the sole Lancashire representative against teams drawn from South and West Yorkshire.

The Swarm's opening fixture was against the Featherstone Pheonix. The Swarm lost narrowly four tries to three in a very even contest with the Rochdale side's Matty Gormley shining as the Swarm's most potent attacker and Matt Hurst working hard in defence.

The second match saw the Swarm come up against Knottingley A.R.L.F.C. The Rochdale outfit again performed with great credit but injuries to both Dave Tyson and Matty Gormley severely hampered the Swarm attack. Thanks to the hard work of Adam Bates and Zaz Ahmed the Rochdale side came close to taking a share of the spoils before going down three tries to two.

The Swarm's final game of the day was against Tag Merit League rivals the Wakefield City Webcats.

The Swarm, without any substitutes, were up against it from the start but they showed great team spirit and determination, non more so than Emily Wynn who was always a willing volunteer to take the ball up.

Wakefield took an early lead and pushed away slightly but the Swarm came back and snatched a last second 5-5 draw with a late score by Mark Wynn.

The Swarm finished a creditable 5th over all in a festival played in a fantastic spirit.

Sunday saw the Rochdale Swarm take on the Leeds Lost Loiners at Firgrove.

The Swarm started slowly with most players doubling up from the previous day's festival. The Leeds outfit took an early command of the game scoring several unanswered points before the Swarm found any rhythm.

Brian Ashton helped the Swarm fight back with some excellent angled runs, which allowed Scott Manock to grab a hat trick of tries in the game.

The Swarm went in at the half time break well behind but they rallied well with Kirsty Naylor, in only her second ever game, running well and Zaz Ahemd crossing the whitewash.

Finally finding their feet the Swarm dominated the second half but they had left themselves too much to do and the final score was 19-9 to the Yorkshire side.

Leeds awarded Mark Wynn of the Swarm the Man of the Match award with mentions for Adam Bates, Scott Manock and Brian Ashton.

To finally finish off the weekend the Swarm entered two runners in the Hornets Sprint Challenge, where both Matty Gormley and Brian Ashton performed with credit at the event.