Pilkington Recs v Salford City Roosters
HT 24-0 FT 38-8

By Ste Crehan

Salford city Roosters started the game well with a strong five drives and a nice down field kick, Pilks brought the ball back with some good ball handling early on, spreading the ball through the hands, a fine cross field kick from Lewis found Aidan for the first try of the game with Aidan slotting the conversion for a 6-0 lead.
Recs then backed their attack up with a strong defensive set to pin Salford in their own half, Pilks again spread the ball through hands to send Aidan over for his second of the day with Lewis converting to extend the lead to 12-0

The roosters attacked hard and it took a great defensive effort with tackles from Kieron, Ellis, Ben and George to keep them off the scoreboard and force them into touch to regain possession.
The first scrum of the game and Kristian took the initiative to sneak a nice scoot down the blind side to make some good meters for recs, an attempt at a chip through on the fourth tackle was easily taken by Salford and were flying up in attack again forcing Pilks to defend hard and to keep them out.
An early fumble handed possession back and Salford number 4 was causing recs problems as he was carrying defenders with him but Pilks showed some excellent group tackling with Ellis, George, Zak and Bailey .

Recs were attacking with style and some smooth passing put Dylan Greenall in space to run in for the third try of the day before converting his try to go 18-0 up.

Cayden looked like a real life Ironman in their new kit as he stood up strong for a perfect hit up on the attacking roosters. Rhys then heavily pressured the kicker to charge down the kick and regain possession.
Cayden then turned to attack and seemed to carry half of the Salford team on his back before getting the ball out to the wing for Logan to charge in. Rhys converted to widen the gap to 24-0

Rhys switched his tackling head on with a near perfect defensive set, making five back to back tackles, three of which were one on one efforts before again pressuring the kicker.
Recs went close to scoring again before the break but Aidan was bungled into touch and another strong defensive set from Rhys, Ben and Aidan with Rhys pressuring the kicker again saw the end of the half 24-0

The second half started with a steady five drives and a kick from Pilks with Logan and Harry making a strong first tackle to force the roosters attacker into touch and regain ball control in the Salford half.

Rhys threw a lovely ball in a switch to Logan at the back of the scrum as Logan was running a great line, Logan literally threw Rhys out of the way and charged to the line, only to be called short and a knock on in a controversial decision by the match official mr B.Hatton.

Harry helped Salford out after a couple of injuries saw them a player short and he didn’t waste any time, putting a big hit on Dan in his first tackle.
Harry followed that up with a fantastic run at Pilks defensive line linking up well with Salford’s number 11 and 12 before the roosters put a high bomb up on the last tackle.
Ethan took the high ball brilliantly under pressure before offloading to Zak who beat a number of Salford defenders,but recs couldn’t quite break the white wash.
Harry again brought the ball back for Salford and every Pilks defender was on him, Salford number 12 ran hard again at the Pilks line and barged through to close the gap to 24-4

Pilks soon fought back with a strong drive from Logan and some fancy footwork from Bailey before some quick thinking offloads found Dylan Greenall for his second of the day to make it 28-4

Recs weren’t for letting the roosters back into the game and six outstanding back to back tackles from Aidan made sure of that.
Pilks ran a simple set with five piercing drives and a quick kick chase to give Logan his well deserved try to go 32-4 ahead.
Kristian and Dan produced a perfect one up one down big tackle to force a knock on and turn to attack again, Lewis took a darting scoot before offloading for Dylan Greenall to run in the final try of the day.
Kristian added the extras to end the scoring 38-8
Salford had one last attack but a bruising tackle from Dylan Finney, Emily and Monty forced the attacker into touch to end the match.