Hoylake travelled away to Caldy.
Unfortunately, Hoylake were again beset by late call offs, and for the first time ever were unable to field a full team. The recent spate of injuries and call offs meant that Hoylake were unable to call upon many of their first choice players and started the match fielding only 9. This coupled with a consistent lack of discipline and poor tackling opened the door to an easy win for Caldy.
From the start Caldy proved to be dangerous opponents, getting the ball along the backs quickly and making good ground against the timid Hoylake back line. The disparity in numbers ensured that Caldy had a continuous overlap and they were further assisted by some poor tackling by Hoylake. Despite some heroic tackles by Dan moragn and Kieran Murphy, sustained pressure by Caldy resulted in them scoring four tries in the first half with Hoylake on the back foot for most of this. There were precious few periods of possession or attacking play from Hoylake, and most of these were the result of penalties awarded against Caldy. Ross Bourne put in some strong attacking runs from these penalty situations, but Hoylake failed to capitalise on this initial momentum by neglecting any support running.
There was some improvement in Hoylake,s performance in the second half with some strong running from Harry McNeil and Brad Orsich. However, continued poor handling, inconsistent tackling and an inability to get players quickly up in support meant that it was the other side of the scoreboard that kept ticking upwards. Much more of the play was now in Caldy half but two break away tries allowed Caldy to increase their lead to 36 – nil. The ten minutes saw the Hoylake forwards also began to play more effectively, recirculating the ball efficiently and giving the backs a few more chances to run with the ball. However, it was all too little too late and the final score of 40 -0 fairly reflected the difference in the two teams on the day.
Despite the one-sided pattern of play, there were a couple of outstanding contributions from the Hoylake squad, including Dan Morgan at Hooker who displayed a consistently high workrate throughout the match and who put in some determined cover tackles to frustrate an otherwise rampant Caldy. Another player worthy of mentioned was newcomer Freddie Saint who played very competently in the Fly Half in only his First match of rugby and showed considerable potential for the future.