Well if you call a 16 yr old who'd never touched a rugby ball before a sub, yes we had a sub but let's not split hairs eh?

He's on the team sheet, he's a sub

Anyway, Accrington 24-8 Bury. No excuses, terrible performance from us against a good, well drilled Accy side with a couple of dangerous runners. Mistake after mistake including losing the ball when over the line for a clear try, stupid decisions, chasing the game in our own 20, falling off simple tackles, etc. But for that bombed try and being held up over the line 5 times it would have been closer but our worst performance of the year by some distance and Accy deserved it.

Our 2nds also went down 32-18 against Waterhead A. Was a close game from what I've heard, with Waterhead only pulling away late on. Good performance against a much bigger and experienced side.

Bury vs Fitton Hill

Fitton cried off 30 mins before kick off. Nice one.

Suppose we get the points and they still have to come to our place, but 30 mins? Really?

Little Hulton Reds v Ashton Bears A
This game didn't go ahead because the ref deemed the pitch unplayable at 2:45pm. It was as the warm ups were coming to an end when this was brought to everyone attention and although LH went to get some sand to try to sort the bad patches the game was called off. Really not sure what happens now so we'll see what the league say on Monday. The parts of the pitch the ref wasn't happy with were very bad and had very loose sticky mud that came over the ankles so it was probably the right call. Why it was left so late is another issue though. In other news 1st team beat Clock Face to go top of the premier league for the first time in our history.

Got to say the facilities that LH are getting together are very impressive and their home changing rooms are among the best I've seen, well done to all concerned. LH started the same season we did so it's great to see how they're progressing.

Bolton 34 - 34 Bury

I wasn't there on Saturday but believe it was a pretty gripping see-saw game with the lead exchanging hands several times. We had 25 missing altogether (about 10 from 1st team) but still managed to field a 2 open age teams (2nds lost at Rochdale Cobras A), a great achievement.

Saying that, with ex-Mets players officiating like this were we always up against it!

"In touch, sir!"

So, 8/9 games in how do we all see it panning out? OSJ unbeaten, bodes the question...why did they welsh out of promotion? So they can stick 40/50 points on teams every week? Pathetic.

We beat LHR today 23-10. Decent side they've got going now couple of big forwards I've seen knocking around the amateur circuit before.

Our aim this season is a bit of consolidation and bring some of our younger lads in. Think we had 12 under 21 today and a couple of old blokes!

Ashton Bears A 28-18 Pilks A.
1st time we've ever played Pilks at A team level & a decent game.

With the obvious exception of OSJ I think the leagues fairly well balanced with a lot of closely matched teams. The OSJ decision is a strange one & only they'll know why they opted to drop down a division. A lad who played prop for our 1st team in the Prem a couple of seasons ago is playing there so it'll be interesting to see how he's doing when we play them.
Strangest result of the day is Wigan St Cuthberts A putting 40 on Wigan Bulldogs, maybe all their NCL lads haven't drifted away to other clubs after all.
One over-riding thing that I've picked up talking to other coaches is the numbers involved in the game. It seems universal that the number of players available to make it to training & available to play is an issue that's getting bigger.

Think from a Langworthy perspective, so far we are going OK. Should have picked up a couple more wins perhaps but the most encouraging thing has been that we have not been blown off the park by any team with Orrell scoring the most point against us so far at their place and that was only 34. Always was going to be a building and establishing year for us and blooding the young lads coming through.

No surprises to see the teams who are up at the top there and as said by Morning Glory, on the whole a well balanced division with quite a few close games which is what you want and not blow out scores as that's how you do lose players from the teams suffering.

On the point of numbers, it certainly does seem a lot of players are being lost to the game.

From a Bury point of view (even though I've been less involved this year so far), numbers are not currently a problem. After years of struggling to find 17 lads for each game (Ayres Rock you'll remember those days!), suddenly we've seen a huge influx of lads. The weekend we played Bolton and Rochdale A we had 25 missing (10 1st-team) and still field two full squads.

We've also got a good u-18s side ready to break into open-age next year and are trying to field a Masters team at Eccles this weekend, not sure how numbers are looking for that.

Most of the new faces are RU lads, with a few RL lads coming to us from other clubs. We're seeing many of them (especially the youngsters) preferring RL and committing themselves to us over their old RU clubs. That said, our good relations with local RU clubs has been key and we don't want to burn bridges! It also means that while numbers are great, they are often RL novices and can take a while to pick the game up.

No idea why Orrell chose to forgo promotion, seems pointless and not particularly positive for anyone. They may have had concerns over player numbers this year but that doesn't appear to be a problem. That said, other clubs have dropped down divisions over squad concerns so they wouldn't be the first. Other than Orrell and a couple of strugglers it seems to be a fairly even division so far with some good contests.

I would say clubs now need squads of between 30-40 lads to field a team throughout the summer. With holidays, weddings, festivals and weekend work you can have 30 available one week and down to a bare 13 the next. It's a problem with summer I don't think anyone foresaw.

Numbers of registered players doesn't seem to be the issue - we've got more than enough for 3 Saturday teams it's players commitment to train regularly & play at the weekend. As a result teams seem to be having inconsistent 17's and the quality is going down for me. There are some good teams around the divisions but not the depth of quality teams there used to be. If the problems at youth level continue I can only see that continuing too. Maybe it's just a transition period & it will improve but the signs aren't too good at the moment.