Bolton, Bury & Rochdale District Cup Final: Bury Broncos 20 - 0 Rochdale Cobras

Outstanding performance, from 1-17 all the lads turned it on today. The game started as a tight affair, with Cobras making a couple of breaks early on, but then a dropped ball was scooped up and finished from halfway to see us leading 6-0 at half time. To be honest after those 2 early breaks we never looked like conceding and I don't think they broke the line again. Tries were still hard to come by but some good running and a few powerful drives saw us score 3 more without reply. And to nil any opposition is always an achievement.

This isn't the Cobras team of a few years ago, they've had quite a few lads leave and their Fijian contingent were playing in the Ireland A vs Fiji UK game that followed ours, but they were still a tough side, well drilled side and it was a gritty win. Plenty of sore bodies tomorrow.

Our first ever piece of silverware - now a few scoops to celebrate!

As expected Bury Vs Widnes Tigers was a whiteout. Next game for us will be our 1st home game of the season against Little Hulton. Can anybody tell me anything about them?

Enjoy your Easter!

Latchford Albion 0 - 82 Bury Broncos

Record score and margin for Bury today, but after the first 20 minutes or so a non-contest. Latchford kept going but were outmatched, and despite a few of their experienced heads trying to get back into it we had too many strike players all over the park and a were utterly dominant in defence - I think they made 1 clean break all day.

Ref blew 8 minutes early, game was over well before that. There will be much tougher games in this division and I have no doubt Latchford are normally stronger than today.

On another note our 2nds started their season today with a bit of a patched-together side of veterans and young lads and gave a decent account of themselves going down 40-18 to Waterhead A, a respectable scoreline, chuffed with how they went.

Looks like a bumper win for Bury today. Some odd results so far this season!

Anyway, today saw our first home game since joining NWML 4 and we put put in a solid performance against Little Hulton who had been going well. Would have liked to have scored more, but can't be too disappointed in winning to nil. Final score Tigers 38 Little Hulton 0

Westhoughton 0-30 Ashton Bears A.
With 3 1st team call ups & Ladies Day at Aintree with a big night out round Liverpool taking its toll, we travelled with 15. A good performance from the youngsters who's defence & pace won the day. With a few less dropped passes & more than 3 conversions the score could have been more. Plenty of positives again though from a team that's beginning to settle. The Lions look to have a good base of home grown players to work from & I'm sure the link up with Duffs will pay dividends for them soon.

Bury 24-26 Fitton Hill

Awful performance from us. Started bad and got worse for the first 30 minutes, couldn't tackle for sh*t or keep hold of the ball - not sure if a few thought it would be easy after last week's 82-0 win. Went 0-18 down in no time, and then 6-22. Fought our way back into it and finally sorted our game out to creep ahead 24-22. Fitton then ran it on the last and broke to make in 26-24 with 5 minutes to go.

We had plenty of ball and dominated the final 20 minutes but poor decisions and more errors cost us dearly - think we completed 2 sets all game. Some of our lads need to realise you can't win by just trying to barge through. Fair result and well battled by Fitton but we let ourselves down badly today.

Widnes Tigers 24 Hindley A 6

Our 3rd game in 7 days and missing 6 from our widnes cup defeat to HFH, however we continued our improvement in the league with a decent performance. Could and should have put them to the sword but that's rugby league!

Onto Bury next week!

Latchford A 12-20 Ashton Bears A.
It didn't rain was probably the best thing I can say about this game. Very scrappy game dominated by high shots & mistakes. Still, an ugly wins still a win and we've learned a lot from this one so onwards & upwards for the young Bears.

OSJ 72- 0 New Springs
Bit of a none game this one. Springs sent a mixture of very young looking players and a few older heads who didn't look fit! Staggered they've won games this year unless they've already lost some players. The ref blew up with 12 to go as they'd pretty much thrown the towel in and it was raining sideways. Positive was this being the first game at Orrell's new permanent home as the changing facilities are almost finished.

Bury Broncos 52-30 Widnes Tigers

Good competitive game played in tough but fair spirit. Widnes are a big set of lads - possibly too big! The first half was scrappy from our perspective, it was tit-for-tat on the scoreboard with stupid penalties and mistakes from us making Widnes' job much easier, 24-24 at half time.

A strong second half saw us pull away to 48-24 before Widnes scored again, if I'm honest I think our fitness and pace told in the end with some of Widnes' big lads out on their feet. Pleased to get back to some form after last week's awful performance, though we again made things difficult for ourselves.

Cheers to the Tigers for a cracking game.

We let ourselves down badly again yesterday. Last minute pullouts etc could give all the excuses in the world, but if you dont play as a unit you wont win games. Credit Bury who played good rugby in the 2nd half, with 13, 15 and 3 going particularly well. Tigers shocking away record continues......On to Fitton Hill next week!

Fitton hill 24 Widnes tigers 26

Following some of the Fitton lads coming to bury last week heckling us from the touch line saying they were going to put 80 on us and 'do in our props' it was nice to see them lose today.

A discusting, dirty team not needed in the league. If any of you are reading this you would be better just picking fights in pubs because a) you might win that fight unlike today when you picked on the wrong set of lads and b) you can't play rugby.

To sum up the game fitton had 2 red card early on following a brawl which saw a fitton coward kick one of our players who was on the floor in the face. Then the match was abandoned after 65 minutes this brawl included their touch line getting involved including a woman who can only be described as a fat extra from shameless kicking our centre in the testicles and one of their players striking a 16 year old spectator who was off the pitch.

The RFL should throw the book at these pillocks


Brain dead thugs and oxygen thieves

.

Can't really argue with any of the above apart from the score was actually 24-20 to Tigers. Fitton have some good strong lads but whatever they are injecting is clearly causing them issues.

Any team that has played us will say we are not a dirty side and are hospitable to all opponents, however when threats are made we have no option but to head straight home, particular when Fittons captain is ripping his shirt off to offer a 16 year old and anyone within 10 yards an introduction to his fists. Then there was Vicky Pollard who began hurling abuse at our female spectators when we were departing. Felt sorry for the ref who had no choice but to call time.

Is that who was in the minibus? We thought it was some of your lads. Sounds like an interesting game, not surprised at what you're saying if I'm honest. Was the ginger winger involved?

Anyway, we lost 20-12 at Wigan Bulldogs. Had 8 first-choice players missing at a wedding, a patched up team with lads out of position throughout, and by an hour had only had one fit sub. We were probably the better side for the first 20 minutes but a ripped ball in a 2-man tackle saw Wigan score against the run of play. We lost form from then on and a string of penalties and errors gifted them points - a 14-point advantage we never recovered from though if we'd converted our tries would've been 20-18. Did ourselves no favours with a terrible completion rate.

Hope we don't get this ref again. It's the third time and I'd say he's crap but that's being nice. Allowing dragging players into touch, losing 15 metre advantage from a knock-on, calling players out of touch from 40 metres away - he let Wigan and their touchline ref the game. One of their lads lifted our little full back (only 5'4"ish) upside down, legs vertical, head down, and he didn't penalise. At one point Wigan knocked on, we appealed and he said "it was only a little one, I'll let it go." WTF??

Wigan played it tough and crossed the line quite often with high tackles, elbows, punches, late shots, etc. None of our lads reacted but in the end two of theirs were sin-binned after one kicked off (again) and the other swore at the ref.

*edit - forgot to mention we kicked off 30+ minutes late due to football traffic. Most of the squad were there but the coach and kit didn't make it until 2.45. No warm-up or prep, straight into kick-off, in fact we only had 12 men on the pitch.

Not really surprised with the Fitton report, we had a bit of an incident in their pub a couple of years ago. Very surprised with the Bulldogs report though, we've always had tough games with them at their place but nothing really to write home about. For what it's worth & from what I've seen this division will be between Bulldogs & Orrell, two decent sides.

Little Hulton Reds 38-24 Ashton Bears A.
Really pleased with the young lads today who travelled with a bare 13 & had to call on an 'experienced' coach as the sub. At one point the combined age of our front row was higher than the rest of the team combined! Credit to LH though, they used their big lads very well & ran out deserved winners as did our 1st team with 4 of our squad called up at short notice. Hopefully back to normality next week when we host New Springs in our 1st home game of the season.