After the recent bad weather, it was a welcome sight to see the first rugby match of the new year played on Thursday afternoon as our U15s played Ripley St Thomas School from Lancaster in the quarter-finals of the Lancashire Plate.

Both sides had not played rugby for over five weeks and, apart from this week, had not had the opportunity to train in the run up to the fixture. Despite this, both sides played quite well but it was the Arnold boys who dominated most of the possession in the first half, although Ripley proved on a number of occasions that they had some talented and dangerous runners.

An Alex Casey try gave Arnold a deserved lead of 5-0 at the break and it should have been more after Louis Mottley had put both Alex Evans and Ben Cheston into space out wide, but on both occasions some fine defence thwarted the Arnold boys. However, a sustained period of pressure and territory in the first ten minutes of the second half, saw Arnold score three times. Charles Laycock scored from close range and Alex Casey added the final two tries to complete a stunning hat trick. Andrew Walkden had a very useful and intelligent match at fly-half and Ahmed Ahmed, Tom Hammond, Louis Mottley, Joe Pennington and Oliver McPheely all contributed extremely well to craft a 24-0 lead with ten minutes to play.

Ripley played their best rugby at the end of the match and they crossed for two very late scores which their efforts deserved to make the final score 24-12. This was the U15s ninth win of what has become their most successful ever season and it has been pleasing to see how far they have progressed. We wish them luck for the next round.