Vale of Lune 15 Bowdon 3

BOWDON travelled up the M6 on Saturday to face the Vale of Lune determined to remove memories of last season's heavy defeat.

The match opened with Bowdon's Damian Mei in receipt of the ball from the kick off driving hard into the opposition and he was unfortunate not to release centre Andre Hechter as his pass was called forward by referee Ged Stone.

The following 15 minutes saw Vale in ascendancy with their stand off dictating play, trying to release his fleet of foot back line at every opportunity.

On six minutes, Bowdon were awarded turnover ball and at the resulting scrum 10m from the Bowdon try line scrum half Jonny Sweetnam had a kick charged down and pounced upon by Vale to give them a gifted 5-0 lead.

Bowdon began to get into the match as Mike Billington began to drive into the Vale pack, creating the space for Chris Flanagan to use his pace and guile at 10.

Pressure was further increased on the opposition as the Bowdon scrum began to dominate with Jali Mthokosizi taking one against the head.

However, a penalty to Bowdon on the stroke of half time and a sin-bin to the Lune meant Bowdon turning round to face the strong wind 5-3 down but still in the match.

From the restart Vale made their game plan clear as the 9 and 10 repeatedly attempted to kick with the wind. However poor direction enabled Bowdon to attack, bringing the ball back through the forwards with Damian Mei once again leading the way.

A period of strong running and some reasonable handling followed by Bowdon but they were unable to find the path to the Vale try line.

The move of the match came from the Vale when, from a lineout, the ball was fed through their backs for the right wing to cut inside the Bowdon covering defence to score under the posts.

The match then became a stale scrappy affair and with Bowdon receiving two yellow cards they did well to keep the home side from scoring no more than a single penalty to give victory to Vale of Lune 15-3.