First XV Match report – 16.02.08
Ormskirk 31 Liverpool Collegiate 12
After two drawn games on the road in recent weeks, Ormskirk finally returned to winning ways at home in front of a large crowd basking in the spring sunshine. On a day that saw the famous Green Lane clubhouse receiving a lick of (very appropriate) Kirk Green, all four senior teams recorded wins to keep everyone smiling and the all players feeling proud to wear the Ormskirk Shirt.
The game got off to a mixed start, with Collegiate winning the early forwards battle. After some massive pressure on the Kirk line, the men in Green defended well and kicked back down in to the Collegiate 22. After conceding a penalty, the Kirk Fly Half kicked the home team into a 3-0 lead. Moments later, Ben Davis made a great break down the middle of pitch, and he tried to dummy the collegiate full back. The outrageous Dummy was as convincing as the wild rumours of Paul Blackwood buying a new blackberry mobile phone to receive these very match reports. So the full back brought Davis down, but Mahood was on hand to score under the posts. With the conversion successful, Kirk went in at half time 10-0 up.
The 2nd half started with a bang, Kirk pushed into the collegiate half, and with a well rehearsed backs move, Whalley fed the ball to winger Wroe 20 metres out, who rounded his man and side stepped the cover to go in under the posts. Whalley adding the extras. From the kick off, the Kirk backs were feeling confident, the ball was moved wide straight away, and with slick hands the ball finally found super sub Ashworth who turned on the burners to go in at the corner. A fine team try and Whalley slotted the kick to make it 24-0.
Collegiate to their credit never gave up, they piled more pressure on Kirk, setting up camp on the try line. Man for man Kirk kept knocking the opposition back, they came again, and still the excellent defence didn’t crack.
5 minutes later, kirk ran the ball out of their half with a fine break up the left wing by wiry centre John Curley. After some good rucking on the Collegiate line, Kirk swung the ball wide to Wroe. He managed to use his dazzling foot work to dance round the cover, and managed to get round under the sticks to score his 17th try of the season. Again Whalley adding the extras to make his golden boots take a 100% success rate.
Unfortunately Collegiate managed to sneak in 2 tries in the last 5 minutes to make the final score 31-12. Kirk took their foot off the gas a little bit and this was the only negative point in the after match comments from Coach Harland. A good team effort ensures that Kirk are now third in their league, with 5 games left and 4 of them against teams in the top 5 in the league there is everything to play for.
