Sefton 15 Ormskirk 17
Saturday 22nd December 2007
Lancashire Plate 2nd Round
Ormskirk marched into the Quarter finals of the Lancashire plate with a strong display against fellow league rivals Sefton to bring an early Christmas present for not only themselves for disgruntled Coach Lawrie ‘PH’Sanchez. After a bad day at the office at Southport last week, training in the week was intense and focussed.
Kirk putting out a near strength team welcomed back Andrew J Dean III from his long-term gout injury, started well on a muddy pitch. Hooker Wilson seemed to be hitting his Line out jumpers Lenny Baraclough and Ben Davis well enabling Jamie Gregan at Scrum half to feed good ball to the eager kirk backline with debutant inside centre Matt Johnson making some valuable yards and strong tackles. 10 minutes into the game, flyhalf Barry Miguigan received fast ball and with a well rehearsed move, fed winger Wroe putting him through the gap. Wroe took the ball 30 metres out and put the burners on to go round the full back and slid in under the posts, Manilow adding the extras to make it 7-0. The forwards pick and go’s worked very well with Props Rowley and Jack Black making some good in-roads. The back row of Ben Davis, Adi Molyneux and man of the match Mark Webster put in some bone crunching tackles, trying to out-do each other for the biggest bosh of the day.
After soaking up some pressure the young referee judged Kirk to be offside and Sefton kicked a penalty to make it 7-3 after 30 minutes. Kirk pulled back another penalty on 33 minutes to make it 10-3. Then with 5 minutes to go to the break, wiry centre John Curley made a fine break from the half way line, drawing the Sefton full back to feed winger Wroe for him to beat his opposite winger for pace and he slid in under the posts for his second try of the day, with Barry from Eastenders adding the extras, kirk were 17-3 up at half time.
With 40 minutes away from a fine victory Kirk knew they would have to dig deep and defended very well, Captain Kirby leading from the front, prop Dave Jones made a good contribution when he came on, with winger Spengler and full back Rooney also making some good tackles. When the Gout Free Deane got adjudged to be killing the ball, the referee decided to go the pocket and showed ‘ The bear’ a yellow card. The pressure finally told, when the big Sefton pack finished off a rolling Maul and then 5 minutes later they did the same thing again to make a nail biting finish for the vocal kirk travelling supporters. Enter the Enforcer Phil Davis. For the last 15 minutes he breathed energy into the Kirk pack and made thus Kirk finished the game the stronger even with 14 men.
Coach Harland finally forced a smile ( but only for 2.4 seconds) and told us all we deserved the victory but we still need to put that perfect 80 minutes together.
With no training for a week the lads can enjoy a rest over the festive period, until next Saturday 29th when the annual Grammar Old boys under 30’s play the over 30’s for what will surely be a cracking game at Green Lane, kick off at 2pm. Such is the honour of this game, and with reputations (both old and new) at stake we have one old boy travelling all the way from Australia to play in the famous fixture.
