ECCLES SENIOR COLTS After a strange year defined by the ever-changing rules of the Covid epidemic, we are looking forward to finally playing some competitive Rugby again next month. We worked hard to keep momentum by training with every opportunity the RUFC return-to-rugby schedule afforded us. We genuinely hoped to restart matches in December, and had fixtures setup before the second, harsher, lockdown hit. When we emerged from restrictions at Easter we had a brief training window before we entered our short, 1 month season of friendlies. Our fixture secretary set us a hard task with our May matches, 3 strong Cheshire teams and the Lancashire champions. We only managed one win, over Altrincham Kersal who we are pooled with in the Halbro Colts league. However, our best result was surprisingly a defeat, losing 14:9 to regular Lancashire champions Warrington. We were winning at half time, and only poor luck in the dying minutes cost us a famous victory. A shortage of backs led us to two defaults against strong Cheshire teams, with a 13:33 loss to Crewe where we fielded 13 forwards and only 2 backs, and a 36:7 loss to Cheshire champions Lymm. We have many dual code players, and May overlapped with traditional league season leaving us short in many key positions. The positive from this was it gave us a chance to play our last two matches with several U16 players who stepped up fantastically to the challenge of colts’ rugby. The summer break also gave us a fresh opportunity in the shape of the request to appear as a rugby team in a forthcoming Netflix/BBC joint production. Our lads rehearsed with the Actors during the July/August off season, learning how to produce tackles that while looking hard, allowed the Actors to live and fight again. This culminated in an intensive 3 days of filming in the August sun, where the biggest continuity challenge was the sunburn on the boys’ arms! The Halbro Colts league will be starting in September, with five matches in a ‘conference’ format, the results of which will determine of final seeding in the 10 match colts league. Together with league and county cups, the lads finally have a proper programme of competitive rugby to look forward to. Andy Connell Senior Colts Manager
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