Old Aldwynians B 10

IN perfect Bank Holiday conditions Trafford entertained a strong Aldwynians B XV after a late cry off from Old Bedians.

A typical opening game ensured with an abundance of handling errors and wrong options being taken.

After soaking up early pressure MV eventually began to string their game together and get some rhythm going.

The forwards managed to take control of scrums and lineouts with vice-captain John Shay in particular winning solid lineout ppossession.

From one of these lineouts in the Aldwynians '22' scrum half Hope broke close and enabled Captain Ian Robinson to sneak in at the corner.

Full back Hunter rounded off a good first half, based on hard defensive work, with two well kicked penalties to give MV the advantage at the turn around 11-0.

With no wind advantage to either side Aldwynians needed to up their game to be in with a chance, and this they did, catching MV napping.

A powerful forward drive sucked in the MV defence and the visitors bundled over for their first points.

Aldwynians maintained their pressure and MV needed to vary their tactics to regain the upper hand.

Another clean take from a lineout allowed Hope, now laying at fly half - after a nasty and controversial eye injury to Davies, to kick deep into space in opposition territory with cross field kick, on to which debutant Fogg pounced to round the covering defence and score in the corner.

Trafford gradually upped the momentum and Shay capped a fine supporting role by taking the credits for MVs final try of the match.

The need to reshape their formation left MV a little fragile at times and Aldwynians exploited this late in the game by moving the ball wide and stretching MV's defence before going over on the corner flag to round off a well contested and at times hard fought game with MV collecting 3 yellow cards as they tried to stem the tide of Aldwynians forwards.

Next weekends fixture is against Didsbury based rivals Toc H with the 1st XV playing away from home.

Davies will not be available due to his eye injury, and Captain Robinson will be missing due to work commitments, otherwise MV will be fielding a strong side in this prelude to their first League fixture against Ambleside the following week.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.