Bowdon 43 Ormskirk 14
If Ormskirk 1st XV needed a wake up call for how tough this league will be it was confirmed in the opening 16 minutes away at Bowdon. The Cheshire outfit shot into a 24-0 lead in the first quarter after a mixture of basic rugby and simple mistakes from The Green Lane men.
The big difference was in the tackle situation, every time ‘kirk made a tackle the Bowdon player turned and off-loaded to a number of players in support. They had a huge stand off, two creative South African centres and a quality kiwi flanker who destroyed the kirk defence. After this wake up call, Kirk settled into their game plan and played some good rugby. The last 20 minutes of the 1st half were all Kirk, a kick through was pounced on by Andy Wroe and converted by James Illingworth. Then 5 minutes later after some solid defence from Matt Johnson, John Curley passed the ball to Andy Wroe on the half way line who out paced his man on the outside to go in under the posts, again Illingworth converting to make it 24-14 at half time. At this point Kirk looked in the game.
The first 15 minutes of the second half proved to be as good, again Kirk playing some good rugby. Barry Whalley coming in at stand off, with Andy Healey going to scrum half. The Ormskirk outside backs proving to be faster than Bowdon. It was the home forwards who dominated, their line out was solid and they stole a lot of Kirk throw in’s. In the scrum they were wheeled on numerous occasions. 3 more sloppy tries were scored in the last 20, but to be fair Kirk never gave up. Ormskirk’s man of the match was Matt Johnson, and Bowdon selected James Illingworth as their man of the match.
With some other interesting results in the league, Kirk welcome Hoylake to Green lane this Saturday. The Wirral based side coming in to the game after getting well beaten by fancied champions Burnage. Ormskirk will be back to full strength with Johnny Armstrong returning after completing his Cricket season with champions Ormskirk (Well done to the Blue and Gold!!) With a 3pm kick off there should be a big crowd to see if Kirk can bounce back and show that they are good enough for this league.
Elsewhere the 2nds went down 39-19 at home against Macclesfield 3rds. Jamie Gregg, Andy Montrose and Ben Mcarthy getting the trys. The Ormskirk 3rds recorded a good win against Northwich 27-15, Mark Jackson scoring a hat trick, Andy Firman and Shaun Dolan getting one a piece. The fourths were well beaten 43-5 away at Fleetwood, Dave Worthington scoring Kirk’s only try set up by John Little.
