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!