With a much changed squad from the previous week Congleton battled hard but couldn’t finish the chances to give them a footing in the game.

With Bear town Breweries very own Mikey at 9 putting pressure on at the back of every break down Congleton started to brew up some pressure. They created some chances but a similar story of not being able to finish meant New Brighton were 12-0 up at half time.

Injuries throughout the game meant people were being moved around positions to try and get the best combination to score some points.

After half time it was a different story, The Bears crawled their way back into contention with some great play and handling skills to pull the New Brighton defence around. However, after 2 opportunities to score this is where New Brighton were at their most dangerous. Their speedy wingers were pouncing on dropped balls out wide and scored 5 tries nearly all from their own 22 after counting attacking from Congleton’s mistakes.

This did not deter Congleton from carrying on practicing what they had done in training and although the score line does not suggest, we played some really good rugby.

Credit to the front row again, especially to Tom Fowler who has played 3 X 80 minute games out of 3. New Brighton brought the heavy artillery on second half and after a valiant effort from our front 5 we started to be edged backwards at scrum time.

It is with much pride strangely, all the players battled to the very end and gave it their all but the final score was 43-0.

This Saturday sees the 1st XV travel to Didsbury for their first round of the cup, a break from the league but not a break from the development.