Didsbury Toc H 0 - 47 Wigton

Toc H were still missing some key members of the squad, with last season’s player of the season Aidan Murphy, and important second rower Shaun Walker unavailable. There was also a reshuffle of the backline, with Olly Thomas making his first start of the season at fullback, and Dave Hoare moving from his wing position to outside centre.

The game started with Wigton setting their stall out early, using their big runners to suck in defenders and then attempt to release their lively looking back line. Didsbury defended strongly and repelled a number of early attacks, but Wigton’s pressure paid off with an opening try, which went unconverted. Didsbury looked good in the set-pieces, having the better of the scrums and the lineouts throughout the match.
But the clear difference in the two sides was the clinicism of the visitors, who added two further tries before the break, despite Toc H enjoying a good 10 minute spell of possession leading up to the whistle. Didsbury were down 0-19 at the interval but had performed well in the first half.

The second half took up a familar pattern with Didsbury working well to keep possession and make ground into attacking areas. But as soon as the ball was lost Wigton skilfully spread the ball wide and scored 4 long range tries, three of which came in the last ten minutes which increased the score to 0-47.

Despite the hefty looking scoreline Didsbury can take a lot of positives out of the match; they defending resolutely for the majority of the match, the set pieces are starting to come together and performed well and they did have chances to score (and on another day could have had a couple of tries).

Didsbury’s unenviable fixture list doesn’t get any easier as they travel to Aspatria next Saturday.