Fairclough Homes 2nd XV League

New Brighton 2nd XV Struggle Against Strong Lymm XV

Team Manager and Coach Steve Dakin with a large part of the 2nd XV playing in April this year missing for Saturday's opening game of the season was forced to introduce a number of new faces and play some of the team in unfamiliar positions. Under the circumstances, with a hastily put together side and a game plan cobbled together at the last minute the team did very well but lacked the cohesion to cope with a well organised Lymm XV.

Lymm had built up a lead of 17 points to nil by half time through three tries and a conversion. With a superiority up front they used the rolling maul to great effect and only a stout defence kept the Blues in the game. The second half followed the same pattern with four tries to Lymm and two conversions with New Brighton's only reply being a Craig Smithson try on 60 minutes.

Neil Murphy struggled at prop and exchanged places with Mike Gazzola in the second row. Dan Stafford had a good game, despite a niggling hamstring, and Craig Kerr brought off some great defensive tackles in the centre. The half back pairing of Dan Searle and Mike Smith worked reasonably well despite the fact that both players were in unfamiliar roles.

Next Saturday the 2nds are again at home against Caldy and with more players available for selection Steve Dakin is expecting a more structured team selection with players more or less playing in their prefered positions and consequently a much improved team performance.

Team Sheet: 1. Neil Murphy, 2. Dan Stafford, 3. Craig Smithson 4. Ben Lazenby, 5. Mike Gazzola, 6. Adam Whatling, 7. Sean Williams, 8. Joe Lazenby, 9. Dan Searle, 10. Mike Smith, 11. A.J. Hewitt , 12.Craig Kerr , 13. Vinnie Dutton, 14. Dan Hayes, 15. Barry Rylands.
Substitutes: 16. Kyle Hesketh