Should be a good division this year...worthy of a thread!

Bury Broncos 36 : 12 Woolston A (Div 2)

Bury conceded both scores before even touching the ball but then dominated. Most pleasing element was the fact that we had 26 lads turn up to play with a few missing and us likley to have a few more RU lads with us mid-summer. Everyone got a run out and we played the last 20 with old heads (40yrs +)/novices and they held their own too.

Westhoughton 30-32 Bury (Bolton, Bury & Rochdale District Cup Semi-Final)

Horrible win - a poor, lethargic performance we probably didn't deserve to win. A lack of enthusiasm in defence from too many lads and too much one-upmanship in attack.

Westhoughton took the lead before Bury got into gear and eventually pulled away to a 28-16 lead that should have seen the game out. But a string of penalties, a sin-binning and a red card for a terrible 'lifting' decision saw Westhoughton get back into it to draw level as 28-28. The 'lifting' offence gave them a simple penalty kick which took them ahead 30-28 with 2 minutes left, but a couple of mistakes gave Bury good field position and a good set and a carving run with the very last touch of the game got us a try under the sticks; conversion somehow missed.

Scored 7 tries and only converted 2, should have been out of sight really but credit to Westhoughton who showed real spirit to get make a fight of it. Ref wasn't good and the pitch at 'The Den' is always a bog!

Not sure who we play in the final at Spotland, but unless we buck up our ideas we'll be in for a long afternoon.

Little Hulton 32-30 Chester

Good game, pretty close throughout but Little Hulton started both halves much better and scored two tries in opening 10 minutes of both first and second half.

Last three games between two clubs have been decided by 8 points, 4 points and now 2 points - might have a bet on the draw in the first league meeting.

Widnes Tigers are delighted to have been accepted as late entrants into Div 4. Trial game Vs Chester tomorrow, then our first league game will be against the same opposition on 9/3/13. COYT

Two games off already this weekend due to teams not being able to raise a side, hopefully the winter league playoffs and the ru season ending will change that in the next month or so.

Presume you mean Bolton? Not good. I know they've moved to Bolton RU and are entering into partnership with them, they'll be waiting for their season to end and some players to move over. Still, would've though they could get 13 together this early in season.

What did your boys think of last week's game? Not sure I should mention that ref.

Widnes Tigers degeated Chester 26-18 in last weeks trial game. Was a worthy game as it allowed us to field all of our squad and play lads new to the game. We were due to play Chester again this week, however we will now travel to face Orrell St James instead, should be an interesting start to the season and a yardstick as to where we are for this coming season.

No not Bolton, we're up there this weekend & so far the games on & can't see it not going ahead.

As far as last weeks game it was ok, fairly end to end. We've only played one pre-season and we were very rusty but I'm sure that'll work itself out in a couple of weeks. Still a draw was probably the right result at the end. I think the aggregate score for our last two games is 66 all isn't?

As far as the ref goes its a tough job isn't it, he seemed to get a bit lost and a bit intimidated at times didn't he. The new rules seemed to be a source of confusion as well as the tackle count. Perhaps the 35m 'punt' could have been the game winner if he'd have had a better view of it. It's probably best we leave it there eh?

I believe OSJ are mainly the old Riversiders so should be a good game. Looking through this division it's got the potential to be a very tight affair with a lot of close games, a lot of well matched teams.

Bolton will be fine I think. Don't know exact reasons but it may have been the arrangements for moving to the RU base that meant they were a week late. We should be offering that kind of flexibility though if we want the game to grow. From twitter/facebook feeds it seems a really positive step and the RU club (at least on social media) seem really welcoming to the link which is positive to see...

Bury beat Westhoughton 42 - 18 yesterday. A little worried in the run up as we were missing some of our better players but we had been hoping to field 2 teams this weekend so even with a fair few missing the one team we did put out was pretty good. It's great having some depth (years worth of scraping together 14 and playing injured seem a long time ago!). Once the RU season ends and our winter RL lads come back we should be good to field 2 teams on a pretty regular basis.

All in all, looking good at minute in Bury/Bolton!

Ashton Bears A 10-10 Bolton Mets.
Looks like we're quickly becoming a draw specialists! We've got a very young squad this year and with 4 promoted to the 1st team in key positions this is a great result. We've not really clicked going forwards so far but defensively we're in good shape so that will come. Bolton are a big, physical well drilled side who'll go well this year under Des Drummond.

Orrell 26 Widnes Tigers 14

Really disappointed in our showing yesterday. Totally went away from everything we had practised and our defence was woeful. Need to improve quickly if we want to achieve our goals. Credit to Orrell who had some big lads in the forwards who ran hard all game. Onwards and upwards for us and up next we face another trip to Wigan to face old adversaries the bulldogs

Bury's game vs New Springs has been postponed to accommodate our Bolton, Bury & Rochdale District 'Riley' Cup Final vs Rochdale Cobras.

The game was originally to be played at Spotland as an opener to the Ireland A vs Fiji UK game. However, it's now been moved to the Kingsway Park Sports Centre, with a ridiculous 11.00 kick-off on [iSUNDAY[/i, despite the other match not kicking off until 3.00.

Still, it would be awesome to win our first ever piece of silverware, will be tough against the Cobras but we'll be up for it. Gutted I can't play, broken hand won't be right for a few weeks yet and anyway with a baby on the way the wife has told me I'm banned from playing until she arrives - already a month behind with my list of jobs!!

Yes 11am KO is rubbish!!!!!!

Should be a top game tho m8, were rebuilding the cobras team atm with a poor season last year and the worst start ever this year! plus our fijians will be playing in the big game at 3pm....we know this will be a much harder game then the past ones against Bury!! were up for it!!

Will be great for both teams........RL will be the winner

Wigan Bulldogs 40 Widnes Tigers 10

Yet another dreadful first half from us. Things like the bounce of the ball are even contriving against us at present. We need to get our best 17 together and get a result soon. Bury away next, 3 away games to start the season, I know a guy from Bury posts on here, looking forward to it, although we will probably get the usual 7/8 let downs and end up with a scratch side.

I'd say Bulldogs were marginally better than Orrell, who had a great result against Latchford yesterday.

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.