A good win ground out against tough opposition

With the 1sts away and the weather making the pitch and overall conditions decidedly bleak, you'd have been possibly right in the past to think that the numbers ready to turn out would have been low. How wrong you;d have been. The number of people making themselves available to play all season has been tremendous and more are coming to the club every week. Captain Wilkinson had his returning fellow captain Thornber to select from this week and between them they had to trim down to a squad of 20, although true stalwart Geoff Williamson was allowed to take to the field for the final 15 minutes as Clitheroe's 21st man in what is his 51st year in all and 35th at the club.

Prop Shread returned to the front row after injury, Hayton and Spencer returned from the 1sts with renewed vigour, Clitheroe gave a debut to youngster Tom Connell and flying back Gretton returned to the side following childbirth. Some positional changes saw Bartle drop back to 10 to combine with scrum half Brown and Hardy stepped to inside from outside centre to provide some go forward in the centre of the field.

Wilkinson exhorted his team to start as well as they had in previous games and that they did. The ball was retained well by the forwards and the backs showed their determination to run at every opportunity right from the first whistle. Dowson and Thornber were marshalling the forwards and Farnsworth was at his dangerous best, especially when Clitheroe were awarded penalties. Meanwhile, Brown was feeding Bartle well and as a consequence, Bartle kept his opposite number on his toes all game.

It took around 10 minutes for Clitheroe to break down the Burnley defence whereby Bartle found himself with time and space out on the left and he wriggled his way over to make it 5-0. Dowson followed soon after with a try of his own from all of 3 yards. It still had to be scored though and Dowson can be trusted to do just that. Keough missed by a whisker so the score remained at 10-0.

Clitheroe lost a little momentum for the next 10 minutes or so and Burnley showed they could play a little. However, the wind was knocked completely out of their sails as Wilkinson arced right before passing to McEntyre supporting well on his outside. He drew the winger beautifully before offloading to debutant Connell, who sprinted towards the try line. The full back did well to catch him and as he was brought to the ground he offloaded excellently to Wilkinson who gratefully took the pass before sliding over the line. It was a well worked team try and I'm sure young Connell did himself no harm at all in making a try--scoring pass to his captain……

So, Clitheroe turned at the break 15-0 to the good and with more hope for the same it looked good for the home team, especially after Hardy scored a try and Keough slotted a penalty to extend the lead yet further. However, they didn't quite bank on Burnley hitting back as well as they did and Clitheroe found themselves under enough pressure to concede two tries in the opening 20 minutes of the 2nd half to take the score to 25-14 in Clitheroe's favour, far too close for comfort. Pressure was finally relieved after a tense time on the Clitheroe line when Hayton crossed for the final try of the game. Keough added the extras to take the final score to 32-14.

It was a thoroughly entertaining game, if slightly worrying from Clitheroe's perspective, especially in the 2nd half and the team will undoubtedly take many positives from the way they ground down the opposition throughout the first half and the way they grappled the game back from Burnley in the 2nd.

Full back Keough was deservedly awarded man of the match but Bartle, Hardy and Connell must have run him close.

Next week sees the 2nds travel over the hill once more to Colne & Nelson, the scene of a 34-7 Clitheroe win when the sides first met back in September in only the 2nd league game of the season. Colne & Nelson cannot be underestimated after they gained a couple of wins of late and with this being a knockout game in the Raging Bull plate there's plenty up for grabs. The England game will be shown at the club live during the afternoon and will be replayed when the 2nds get back from Colne around 5pm.