Ormskirk bow to Bowdon

Sep 18 2008 by Our Correspondent, Ormskirk Advertiser

IF Ormskirk 1st XV needed a wake-up call for how tough this league will be it was confirmed in the opening 16 minutes 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. 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.

Kirk then settled into their game plan and played some good rugby. The last 20 minutes of the first-half were all Kirk.

A kick through was pounced on by Andy Wroe and converted by James Illingworth. Then five minutes later, after some solid defence from Matt Johnson, John Curley passed to Andy Wroe on the halfway 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.

The first 15 minutes of the second-half proved to be as good, again Kirk playing some good rugby with Barry Whalley coming in at stand-off and Andy Healey going to scrum-half.

The Ormskirk outside backs were faster than Bowdon but it was the home forwards who dominated, their lineout was solid and they stole a lot of Kirk throw-ins.

In the scrum they were wheeled on numerous occasions and three 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.

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 jump back and show that they are good enough for the league.

Elsewhere the 2nds went down 39-19 at home against Macclesfield 3rds. Jamie Gregg, Andy Montrose and Paul Mcarthy getting the tries. 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.