Sports festival kicks off in style

The junior teams

Junior and adult teams from Rochdale flocked to the Whitworth Sports Festival on Saturday (18 June) for a rugby league fest, organised by the Bolton, Bury and Rochdale Rugby League Development Group.

Eight junior teams took part in a junior tag rugby league festival, including Rochdale Mayfield under 7s and 8s, Heywood Tigers and Milnrow Cobras.

Despite giving away a big age advantage the Mayfield Mustangs, showed some real promise with strong running, tenacious defence and some excellent teamwork in their first ever outing.

Also new to the game were the Heywood Tigers, who are a group that run at the Heywood Sports Village as part of the community outreach programme.

All teams showed a great spirit and were presented medals by England Ladies International Jenny Welsby.

Whiworth Spartans, Rochdale Mayfield, Littleborough, Rochdale Cobras and Cobras Merit took to the field in the third Annual Sevens Competition, playing round robin fixtures against each other with the top 2 progressing to the final.

The early round fixtures were all close affairs as energy levels were high and defence was high on the agenda.

Into the second round and the effects of the summer break started to show as summer conference regional team Rochdale Cobras, buoyed by the presence of many sevens veterans from the local Fijian community, out enthused first Whitworth and then Rochdale Mayfield.

Whitworth were then lifted as coach Jonny Donovan arrived in time to stear them to a surprise 2-1 victory over Littleborough, who also lost to Cobras in the final round, leaving Mayfield needing a seven try victory in the final game to see them through to the final.

It was not to be, as the referees whistle blew with Mayfield 6-0 up against the Cobras Merit team, leaving the Castleton based team ruing an error by Rob Kershaw in the earlier rounds, which saw him run the ball dead after beating everyone to the try line.

The final started at a ferocious pace as Dominic Kershaw orchestrated the Littleborough attack and Garreth Sharrocks lead his team in defence.

In the end, Cobras proved to have too much as Semisi Cocker and Jo Qaniucui found the offload time after time to ensure the Whitworth 7's trophy found its way back to the Cobras for the third consecutive year.

All teams will now turn there attention to the Charity Cup, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday 6 August at Mayfield Sports Centre as part of the Rochdale 9's.