Woolston Rovers 34 Waterhead Warriors 22

ROVERS made it six successive victories with a hard-fought win over Waterhead Warriors at Monks Sports Club on Saturday afternoon.

The first action of note was in the eleventh minute when Rovers had full back Wil Maudsley sin binned for lying on as the last defender, but it didn’t cause his side too much trouble as they held out whilst down to twelve men and they eventually took the lead on twenty seven minutes when Ryan Brown went on his own from dummy half after a fast play-the-ball and he broke through an attempted tackle to score under the posts, with Chris Twigg adding the simple conversion.

Waterhead responded on the half hour when Luke Du Feu crossed for an unconverted try, but Theo Holt collected his own delicate kick close to the line to score on the right before Twigg landed a penalty a minute from half-time to give Rovers a 12-4 interval advantage.

Two minutes into the second half, a fine run down the right wing by Twigg saw him offload superbly for the supporting Holt to score. Twigg added the conversion, but six minutes later the visitors went over when Pat Toft scored a try that Jamie Mayall converted.

Rovers were soon back on the attack and quick hands saw the ball reach substitute Lewis Hoarty and quick thinking from him saw him find fellow sub Olly Parr, who went over in the left corner before Holt’s long pass found Twigg out wide and he scampered over in the right corner and landed a fine touchline conversion to make the score 28-10.

As the game entered the final seven minutes Waterhead gave themselves hope of a shock comeback when substitute Mitchell Birch went over for a try that was followed immediately by another try from Mayall, who converted both scoresto reduced the gap to just six points.

Rovers’ nerves were calmed three minutes from time when a lovely pass straight from a scrum by Billy Maunder found Justin Becker and he powered through the middle on a twenty metre run to score, with Twigg’s conversion completing a 34-22 success.

Rovers: Maudsley; Twigg, Becker, Chadwick, Taylor; Holt, Maunder; Mellor, Brown, McGregor, Clayton, Fearnley, Clarke. Subs: Parr, Davies, Conway, Hoarty.