Manchester 27 - 0 Aldwinians

For the third time this season Manchester played host to Aldwinians but this time in the semi-final of the Lancashire Plate. Aldwinians had come off second best in the earlier friendly games but with a place in the Final of the Lancashire Plate at stake were a far more determined outfit.

The opening exchanges were even and Manchester were lucky not to go behind when ill-discipline at the breakdown gave Aldwinains a kickable penalty which luckily for Manchester dropped short of the bar. This close call rallied Manchester and good approach work from the forwards resulted in a scrum close to the Aldwinians line from which Louis hinted the gap to cross for the first score. With Manchester slowly gaining the ascendancy the ball was moved out to Ollie near half way who ran with great determination to end the first half scoring and allowing Manchester to turn around with just a 10 point advantage.

Shortly after the restart Manchester woke up and reverted to their normal style of fluid rugby, marching relentless up field the tiring Aldwinians defence left a gap for Louis to sneak through for his second close to the posts. Poor sportsmanship from a frustrated Aldwinains player resulting in him having 10minutes in the sin bin while Louis slotted the conversion for a 17-0 lead. The cushion of 17 points allowed the Manchester players to relax and the quality of their play improved. Sweeping the ball from left to right and going through several phases of play allowed Louis to speed through another gap and record his hat-trick. The Aldwinains cause was not helped by the fact that no sooner had the one sin-binned player returned then another was sin-binned for repeated high tackles. With 5 mins left to play Manchester managed to exploit the advantage in numbers when a missed touch find on the left was sweep to the right where some straight running and deft handling allowed Louis to loop around the outside and score his 4th.

The final score of 27-0 doesn’t reflect what difficult opponents Aldwinians were, and although the score lines from previous matches might have effected their confidence, they never gave up and but for some poor final passes they could easily have scored a couple of tries themselves. In Manchester's his was by no means the "Louis Show", though he had a fine game, his scores came from excellent team work and interplay - it was just his day for being in the right place at the right time but with 22 points it was a day he should rightly remember.