The U13’s turned up at Golborne bright and early wearing shirt and tie representing the Culcheth in the highest order. The players like any cup final were tense and full of nervous energy in anticipation of the big game day.

The game started with both sides making basic errors and the first 5-10 minutes became a nervous show of mistakes not helped by drizzling wet conditions. The Eagles however were dominant in Defence and you could see a clear difference with our intensity, power in tackles and dominating the ground. Our square marker players were brilliant making back to back tackles and keeping the hornets pinned into their own half for most of the 1st half. Once nerves settled and the Eagles got back to basics we started to build field position with solid running from the forwards and looked dangerous on every run and attack.

First half try scorers :-

· Stephen Hill x 2

· Jacob Gumbs x 1

· Jacob Heenan x 1 Conversion

14-0 Culcheth Half time.

At the half time team talk we focussed on :-

· Keeping our defensive intensity and controlling the ground.

· Going back to basics and looking after the ball.

· Using the width and overlaps to spread the ball and tire out Haltom’s defence even more.

The 2nd half continued with the Eagles being vocal, dominating the tackle and showing very strong defence. Halton were really trying to breakdown our defence with tricky passes, kicks and set moves but the Eagles seem to have all bases covered. A few tactical personnel changes really helped us in this half with the introduction of Kyle @ dummy half who controlled the attacking game brilliantly, this also freed up the 3 x N’s (Nathan B, Noah, Nathan) to formulate our attacks and spread the ball. This team effort resulted in some excellent moves and solid field position which followed by tries with Nathan Heywood scoring twice in concession.

10 minutes into the 2nd half the Eagles dropped down to 12 players due a red card / sending off, the eagles then had to rally up the defence even more to fill the gaps. A good set from Halton lead to the ball going through hands and took advantage of the overlap to crash over in the corner to score. The last 5 minutes seen Halton throwing (literally) every the had at us to cause an error or a reaction but Culcheth stayed firm and disciplined to control the game. The game was then firmly secured when captain Nathan Bond stood up and scooted from dummy have with a ‘show and go’ to break the Halton line and then stepped passed the full back to score under the sticks to end the game.

Second half try scorers :-

· Nathan Heywood x 2

· Nathan Bond x 1

· Jacob Heenan x 3 Conversions

An amazing team performance , every single player did their individual job fantastically and boy did it show as we looked in control for the full game. Go EAGLES!!

Full time score 32 – 4 to the EAGLES!!

MOM – Nathan Heywood.

Culcheth Eagles Rugby League

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