Trafford MV Win Away To Littleborough 0-19

On a grey, grizzly day with a mist shrouding the nearby hills and Hollingworth Lake Trafford MV travelled to Littleborough with League points becoming an ever more urgent need.

With 3 teams earmarked for relegation in the 14 team league MV need to start picking up winning points rather than the losing bonus points that have kept them out of trouble so far.

Littleborough won the toss and chose to play with the advantage of a sloping pitch expecting MV to tire playing uphill on a sticky, heavy pitch.

Both sides opened playing attritional rugby with MV more than matching the bigger home side forwards. Trafford were not sitting back and took the game to the home team with good drives from Burke and Quigley and excellent tackling form Bevan at open side.

MV soaked up early pressure and then made ventures into the Littleborough ’22 – good ball retention forced interference from the defence which gave Pat Eccles the opportunity to nudge MV ahead 0-3 with a penalty.

MV maintained their game plan defending with intensity and half backs Eccles and Crampton putting the ball into the home ’22 to play the game deep in the defending half. This pressure play forced another penalty which Eccles duly converted although it only just scraped over the crossbar ! 0-6 to MV.

With tight games the norm between these two sides MV knew that the game was still on and Littleborough forced 2 penalty attempts themselves, one on the stroke of half time, both however were poorly struck as both were in quite kickable positions.

This allowed MV to take their 0-6 lead into the half-time break.

With poor light a quick turnaround was made and MV, now with the advantage of the slope, had a confident approach. With Cramptons astute kicking and the forwards taking the game on MV constantly had Littleborough on the back foot.

MV launched a strong attack forcing play to the right of the field which was held up by the defence, play was switched to the left and a long miss pass was made cutting out two men for MV winger Jamie Kingdon to sprint over wide on the left, too wide for Eccles conversion attempt 0-11 to MV.

With the home side getting a verbal lashing from their coach they came immediately back at MV and made some in roads earning a penalty shot to the left of the up rights.

With a change kicker there was however no change in fortune as the kick sailed across the face of the posts missing to the right.

With there try line still intact MV again launched a foray into the home half. Good support play and ball retention had the defence struggling and it looked at if Matt Coxon had wriggled through his tackler to score only to be brought down a couple of yards short.

The ball was retained and quickly moved along the back line for Salford Uni student Dominic West to outpace his opposite number wide on the right, he converted himself with Eccles having been replaced with a knee injury. 0-16 to MV.

With the referee having managed a good game between old rivals it was now for MV to see the game out as the home side struggled to get something out of the game in front of their home support.

Without having to worry MV played the percentages and put the ball repeatedly deep forcing Littleborough to try to run the ball back up the sloping heavy pitch – no mean feat ! MV rounded off the game with a late penalty from West to give an encouraging 0-19 away win to lay down the challenge for 2017.

This was a great start to the new year with both forwards and backs performing well in both attack and defence,the attitude was good too with a marked improvement in the level of penalties conceded and discipline in tight situations.

With a run of away games coming up MV can take great confidence in a clean sheet away from home as they travel to Oldham on Saturday.

Final score: Littleborough 0-19 Trafford MV.

(Reported by Wilf Dooley)