A final quarter brace from Wilmslow winger Lawrence James, plus an earlier conversion and penalty, helped the Wolves to victory over bottom of the league Leigh.
There was just a hint of anxiety as Wilmslow took the field for this crucial league match. At the mid-point of the league season, they had registered six wins, one draw and six losses to lie ninth in the fourteen club league.
A loss would propel them even further down the table close to the relegation zone; a win would have them moving up the table to relative security amongst a cluster of mid table clubs.
However, on the other side of the field Leigh were in an even more precarious position as they sit anchored to the bottom of the league table since the start of the season, with just one win to their name.
Though, the Manchester side had suffered six defeats by seven points or less belied their true strength and improved form in the last month had seen them get agonisingly close in several successive matches. ‘We’ve found a way of losing matches when we were winning them,’ commented one of their officials.
Nevertheless, Leigh had the better of the first half as the home side served up a shaky forty minutes. At least half a dozen lineouts in good attacking positions were lost by the Wolves, with their forwards being consistently rucked off the ball, with possession handing over to Leigh on numerous occasions.
With such generosity, it wasn’t surprising when Elliot Ryan knocked over a penalty on thirteen minutes to give Leigh first blood. Five minutes later, Lawrence James levelled the scores from a full thirty five metres.
Wilmslow’s first try followed in bizarre fashion. Leigh were attacking in the Wolves half when a pass was deflected and eventually taken by Mike Clifford as he was covering across. It was then recycled to scrum half Andy Walker who, seeing that Leigh had nobody back, put in an accurate kick up to their line.
The Leigh forwards under intense pressure eventually secured the ball but the clearing kick was partially charged down and ended up in the arms of big Dan Wright standing all alone under the posts. He gratefully took the ball and just tumbled over the line.
Not for the first time this season, the ball was then dropped at the restart and initiated a series of events that led to Leigh’s first try. They got the shove on in the scrum and made their way to the Wolves’ line where they were deemed to be held up. No matter, from the next scrum, a wide pass out to the left gave Ryan an easy run in. Minutes later, they had a scrum in midfield and scrum half Dave Wood kicked them to the Wolves line again. The defence was forced to concede a lineout and from a catch and drive, they plunged over for their second try to be 10-15 to the good.
In the remaining minutes of the first half, the Wolves butchered several good opportunities. They were unable to finish off two charge downs which took play to the Leigh line and a long pass to the unmarked James on the right wing just wasn’t well enough directed for him to take it.
Whatever was said to the huddled Wolves at half time was clearly listened to and acted upon. If they’d continued the way they had been going, then just as surely as darkness follows daylight, they would have lost this game. Leigh started the second half with a promising attack, which if it had produced anything, would certainly have made the Wolves’ task extremely difficult. When they were awarded a penalty out on the left, instead of going for another catch and drive, they elected to go for goal and missed. Their moment had come and gone in the blinking of an eye.
Immediately afterwards, yet another kick was charged down and in a replay of the first Wolves try, the defenders secured the ball under intense pressure and the clearing kick from behind the posts went conveniently at comfortable catching height to the covering Wilmslow hooker Max Harvey out on the left. Harvey knows the way to the try line and when he was held up an interchange of passes put the galloping Toby Rowe on the left wing in for the equalising score.
The Wolves though were now playing much more pragmatic rugby, patience was the watchword, it started to pay and you could almost see the belief oozing into the players. They took the ball into contact, made sure they were going to recycle it and forced Leigh into conceding penalties and yellow cards for refusing to release the ball in the tackle.
James, it seemed, just started to find the range with his kicking, the lineout became a reliable source of possession and when a catch and drive was halted, the Wolves moved it right and had the patience to recycle several times before releasing James on the wing for the third try.
More was to come, a well-timed intrusion from full back by Ollie Wilkinson nearly put the Wolves out of sight but his pass just went awry. The forwards were now bossing the scrum, Walker was unlucky to be deemed to have knocked on in the act of scoring but the fourth try still came, when the Wolves went left from another scrum close to the Leigh line, Rowe came in off his wing, they recycled, the grafting Simon Irving took it forward and then offloaded to James, who did the rest.
It was five valuable league points, which at one stage had seemed beyond them. They move the Wolves up one place in a league in which a clutch of six clubs are separated by only six points. If, as a collective, they can display the same ‘patience’ for a full eighty minutes next week against Liverpool St. Helens in their last game of the year, then who knows what the possibilities could be.
Finally, on Boxing Day afternoon, the enterprising former Wilmslow fly half from the 1980s, Mark McCall has organised an U21 match between Wilmslow and Macclesfield. The intention is that in addition to the game, it should be a re-union opportunity for both current and former players from both clubs as well as for the wider community.
Match report by Wilmslow Rugby Club.