Bowdon 15 Whitchurch 17

BOWDON suffered a dramatic injury time loss on Saturday as they fell 17-15 at home to Whitchurch.

The home side had thought the points were in the bag after leading 15-5 with 40 minutes of the second half played.

But in an unusually long spell of time added on at the end of the game, Whitchurch remarkably scored two tries to snatch the win.

After 20 minutes Whitchurch had the first chance to open the scoring but the penalty kick was wide, whereas a few minutes later Francois Guguen made no mistake with his effort from 35 meters.

Towards the end of the half a clever kick to the corner by Chris Flanagan completely bamboozled the defending full back who put the ball to touch for a Bowdon throw.

Jonny Sweetman and Damien Mei were both following the kick at pace and got to the ball first, took a quick throw and Mei scooted over unopposed for the score.

The second half was much of the same end-to-end stuff but after 15 minutes Whitchurch got a good drive on at an attacking maul and muscled the ball over the line for a score.

Bowdon soon replied as the ball was shipped through several pairs of hands for Woody Barlow to touch down under the posts to complete the best move of the match.

This put Bowdon 15-5 ahead and in a seemingly untouchable position.

But Whitchurch won the ball in what both sides expected would be the last move of the game and skilfully worked it out to their left winger who touched down despite heavy suspicion of a knock on.

The conversion was added and although Bowdon thought they had wrapped up a 15-12 win there was still more drama to come.

After eight minutes of injury time an argument ensued between Bowdon players, officials and a touch judge about whether or not a touch kick was in or out and Whitchurch put together a fine series of moves to create an overlap on the left for their winger to score.

At the final whistle impassioned protests were made to the referee who responded by brandishing red and yellow cards to the culprits and the whole thing descended into chaos.

Meanwhile, the second XV won 41-10 at Didsbury TocH third XV and the third team lost 27-22 against their counterparts from Bedians.