St Maries dig in to beat Miners (From Warrington Guardian)

St Maries dig in to beat Miners

Widnes St Maries U15s 22

Leigh Miners Rangers U15s 14

North West Counties Cup Second Round

THE tie of the round lived up to expectations.

A strong team performance from the Marie's saw them through in a tense contest.

St Marie's dominated the first 20 minutes keeping Leigh on the back foot with some excellent tackling and good movement.

The pressure eventually told when an excellent pass from Craig Millington found Callum Whitby who outpaced the cover defence to score in the corner.

St Marie's failed to capitalise on their continued possession letting Leigh back into the game who scored near the posts. The conversion making it 4-6.

A few minutes later a number of missed tackles saw the visitors, from a good kick and chase, score out wide. The try was converted.

Following a break from Scott Yates, good hands got the ball to Mark Hardman who did well to get over the line. Yates converted making the score at half time 10-12.

After the break Leigh were awarded a penalty near the posts and increased their lead by two points.

St Marie's fought back, Sean Allen led the way and props Ben Connolly and David Prescott made good yards with some great drives.

With less than 15 minutes to go pressure by the Leigh line resulted in the Marie's being awarded a penalty and a Leigh player sin-binned.

From the play-the-ball good handling saw Chris Cartledge slip a great pass to Alex Park-Rollock who put St Marie's back level.

They continued to pile the pressure on and a strong run towards the line from Cartledge saw him stopped just short but he somehow got the ball out to Sean Conroy who scored.

Yates kicked to make the score 20-14.

Just before the final whistle Yates kicked a penalty.

Latchford 0 Widnes St Marie's Dragons 30

ST MARIE'S produced a workmanlike performance to defeat Latchford who did not deserve to be on the end of a drubbing.

Early on, defences were on top and St Marie's were camped on the Latchford line but could not score.

Quick thinking by Jonathan Griffiths saw him dive over from a play-the-ball to open the scoring, this was followed by an Alex Brown try.

Lewis Nulty barged over for another try and Andrew Sheridan gave Brown the chance to score his second.

St Marie's, marshalled by joint man of the match Bobbie Goulding, continued to take their chances in the second half. A kick from Goulding saw Andrew White race 40 yards for a great try.

Goulding scored the final try after dummying the defence. Good performances from top tackler and joint man of the match Dominic Speakman and coach's award winner Steven Ball.