A beautiful early Autumns day, a rather posh venue, an inter county match, but only 14 players……. Wait on I thought we had a squad of 31! 25 minutes of worry and super cool, but tardy Dave Robbo turned up with the gruesome twosome of Max and JP, and we were Liverpool Collegiate U-15, with one sub. The boys looked like an elite premiership travelling squad in shirts and ties, Brian looked like Worzel Gummidge, (but in his defence, Hilary was away for the weekend).

This will a short but sweet roundup of the game, but does come with our first attempt at match statistics to add flesh to the bone.
Chester’s development squad weighed in with 20 fairly fit and strong looking players, and a forward line up that definitely outweighed our petite bunch. (really mothers, can we not feed them up with lard butties and cow pies?). We have played these a few times before and it’s always been a close game.
1st Half (30 mins)

From the kick off, the boys pushed Chester back to the 22 and gained a scrum. The forwards pushed and gain was made, Matty F, to Ed to Lewis, to Jamie through Chester’s defense and in to score. Paul Peasey obliged with the kick.
The rest of the first half possession was mainly with Chester, but our defense was solid and they didn’t get near to scoring. Our second try of the half was the best of the match with the entire team contributing with forwards starting the move , the backs gaining the territory and the forwards finishing off with Matty F grounding the ball. Seconds to go and the lads relaxed to allow Chester to keep us on ours toes with a late try in the corner. 5-12.

2nd half (30 mins)
The second half showed that summer fitness training does pay dividend. Due to Cameron’s injury in the first half, most boys played the entire hour without a break and without a noticeable change in effort. (We made more metres and had to put in less tackles in the 2nd stint).

2nd half as 1st, Chester seemed to have more possession but did less with it. We battered and pummelled them and released our underfed and malnourished forwards, who obliged with a wonderful surge and try by Mitch. Shortly after re-start we made the territory and the backs obliged with theirs and Jamie’s 2nd try. With James F and Josh A both injured, Paul Peasey slotted both conversions home.

Chester were well beaten, but reminded us that its 60 minutes of play and punished us with a late try to make it 12-26 but Liverpool’s first victory of the season.

Champagne Moment:- Alex Dean powered Magical 35 metre mighty maul, we didn’t think he’d stop till he got to Chester zoo.

By Aitch

Match details

Match date

Sun 14 Sep 2014

Kickoff

11:00

Meet time

01:00

Location

Chester RUFC

Team overview