Didsbury Toc H 17 – 34 Eccles

With both teams safe from relegation, and Eccles chase for the promotion spots over, an open and entertaining match was expected. The game lived up to the billing and with fine weather both teams threw the ball around.

Didsbury were forced into a number of changes, with Phil Cooper (away), Gaz Oakley (away), Joseph Perkins (work), Neil Wilkinson (injured), James Eames (away), all unavailable.

Didsbury, as usual at home, started well and Tom Rooney scored outwide on his return to the side. Rooney received the ball 30metres from the tryline, and the defenders were unable to block his path to the line. Sean Bishop converted brilliantly to give Toc H a 7-0 lead. Bishop, playing in an unaccustomed position of scrum-half, then struck again, this time a penalty. Eccles immediately closed the gap with their opening try, some poor defending by the home side gifted Eccles field position and from there the try scorer crashed over. The conversion was missed, but Eccles returned to the Didsbury half and grabbed a well-taken drop goal, closing the score to 10-8. Eccles began to exert a lot of pressure on the Didsbury defence, and when it appeared they had worked an overlap the ball was intercepted by Dave Hoare who raced the length of the pitch to score, his third interception try in as many games. Bishop converted and the halftime score was 17-8.

Eccles had been challenging hard for promotion this season, and even spent a spell as league leaders and they demonstrated why by dominating huge swathes of the second half. Eccles scored soon after the restart with their scrum half spotting a gap at the side of the ruck, to race in under the sticks. The visitors managed to add a further 3 tries to their tally and scored a total of 27 unanswered second half points. The score could have been greater with Eccles’ prop seemingly unwilling to take any of the three chances handed to him on a plate. But Eccles came out worthy winners, and Didsbury will have to look at improving their second half performances.

Next Saturday Didsbury welcome Blackburn to Ford Lane, 3pm kick off. Anyone wanting to see entertaining rugby, this has been guaranteed at Didsbury all this season.