Ormskirk 1st Team v Warrington (Home) WON 17-10
24th February 2007
Ormskirk First XV put in a fine performance beating Warrington at Green Lane. With confidence riding high after the previous week’s victory the team took the lead early on in the first half with another Andy Wroe try. Set up by Ste Stone at fly half and with a break from centre Mark Hutchings a neat pass to Kirk’s right winger coupled with a 40 yard dash had the home team 7 points up within 10 minutes.
Warrington may have closed the gap had penalty kicks been converted but Kirk were happy to take the rub of the green that they seemed to be getting. The Ormskirk pack has a particularly good afternoon in the scrums and more than matched the bulky visitors’ forwards. Jones and Blackwood provided the up-front muscle with the vocal Graham Bowling between them at hooker. Phil Davis and Jonny Bennett as locks were able to get around the park effectively helping at break downs.
The visitors were posing threats with the ball in hand and with several good runners on the ball Flankers Molyneux and Roberts were kept busy. Shortly before half time Warrington turned pressure into points when their centre found himself in space doing well to break several Ormskirk tackles to score in the corner. Captain Cliff Kirby rounded the troops and got the concentration levels up and the men back on task. From the restart Ormskirk pressed forward and a penalty kick took the half time score to 10-5.
The second half was a tense affair. Warrington set up camp on Kirks 5 metre line for the best part of 20 minutes. Whilst Kirk found it difficult to clear their lines repeated scrums and lineouts within their own 22 demonstrated excellent defence from the home team with the pack having to do the majority of the work.
It just needed one good clearance for Ormskirk to get out of the danger zone and when Stone provided the boot down field Ormskirk could start playing rugby in the other half of the pitch. Kirk would play the majority of the half putting the pressure on Warrington. The pressure would prove fruitful when another solid scrum set up the back line on a devastating attack. Andy Healy made the pass to Stone who drew his man and found Hutchings. The Flanker turned centre made yet another break and with 2 players hanging off him managed to slip the of-load to Chris Ashworth. Taking the ball on at pace and with players out-side him Ashworth dummied his opposite number whilst stepping inside, Warrington’s full back only managed to half tackle him as he cruised over the line. Stone made the conversion and Kirk leading 17-5 could smell victory.
Warrington scored a consolation try just before the full-time whistle. But the 2 points for the league table were first and foremost in the players minds. Coach Phil Harland was pleased with the players and urged them to repeat the performance against Wallasey next weekend.
