NWC Div 4: Leigh East v Mayfield

It was never going to be an easy trip travelling down the East Lancs Road to face an in form Leigh East, and so it proved, with fifteen minutes gone the big Leigh side were 14 points up with Mayfield still seemingly on the bus.

Captain Joe Harte tried to rally his young troops and they eventually responded when stand off Luke Harrtley sold the dummy stepped through the gap and raced thirty metres to the line. The home side were rocked by the score and again upped their game claiming two more tries.

Mayfield never gave up and when Greaves slipped the pass to Slack who in turn put out a great ball to debutant Greenwood, he outpaced the winger and chasing centre to double the Mayfield tally.

At 24 – 8 the game was always going to be beyond the travelling Mayfield side but they refused to lie down contesting every ball and making every tackle count.

Old stagers Greaves, Cockayne and Battersby gave everything as they tried to stop the home side’s attack but their scrum half proved to good and was behind almost everything they produced.

Leigh ran in more tries and the game looked dead and buried but Kershaw leading by example took the game to Leigh, Greaves intercepted on his own ten yard line and sprinted fifty metres before being caught from the play the ball the powerful Colclough made more ground and when Bamford took the ball at pace he proved unstoppable as he powered over. This was Mayfield’s best spell of the game and proved that with a little more self belief these lads can play rugby.

Boardman, who had worked hard for the full eighty claimed the final score of the game crashing through the defence from ten metres out making the final score 44 – 18.

This was not a true reflection of the game and if only Mayfield had started the game the way they finished it would have been a much closer score line. Durrand put in another workman like performance along with McCormack and the ever improving Emerson. The opposition coach named Kershaw as man of the match closely followed by Colclough and Durrand.

Team: Joe Harte, Ryan Drennean, Kev McCormack, Andre Durrand, Ben Emerson, Luke Hartley, Ian Kershaw, Phil Cockayne, Anthony Bamford, Adam Colclough, Andy Battersby, Jake Boardman, Anthony Greaves, Adam Pirouzan, Danny Slack, Tom Greenwood.