Wythenshawe vs Macclesfield 4th xv Saturday 30/11/19
After the success of last week’s match, the Wythenshawe boys had good solid training sessions and where ready to welcome Macclesfield to MEA, who last week did something that no other team had done this season, and that was beat the league leaders Marple 2nd xv 15-12.
Wythenshawe kicked off and straight away Macclesfield showed they were going to attack, at the first ruck they retained the ball quickly allowing their big number 4 to run through the Wythenshawe defence making a 30 meter break before a scrambling defence and tackle from Reece ‘Barrel’ Wong stopped the big man, quick support play from the Macclesfield forwards meant more quick ball allowing their backs to spread the ball to their winger who got tackled into touch by Dave ‘Pops’ Birchenall. From the resulting line out Wythenshawe won and kicked down field to relieve the pressure Macclesfield had been building.
At the first scrum the Macclesfield pack dominated the Wythenshawe forwards and drove them back, with the ball retained Macclesfield used some strong, direct running and quick ball retention to keep the game flowing before some powerful forward running saw Macclesfield take first blood and score to the right of the posts. A missed conversion meant it was only 5-0. Wythenshawe hadn’t helped themselves with too many high tackles allowing the opposition to swat the defenders away like flies.
This try woke Wythenshawe up and they played for about 10 minutes inside the Macclesfield 22. But after a few line outs, and a penalty that was ran in by Salvatore ‘Italian Stallion’ Coluccio the ball was lost at the ruck by some great counter rucking from Macclesfield, thankfully the ref had called for a penalty meaning Wythenshawe would stay in the Macclesfield 22. After a few move lineouts in the same area for both team, the ball final came into the hands of Josh ‘Tape Me Up’ Wilde did an amazing hit and spin move, he just forgot to do the actual hit part of that, but he ran it into contact and again Wythenshawe managed to win a penalty. But unfortunately all this possession in the opponents 22 didn’t result in any points for Wythenshawe.
After that 10 minutes, Macclesfield had enough of being in their own half and decided to change that. The spread the ball from left to right and worked it up the field, again with teh help of Wythenshawe’s poor tackling they went from one end of the field to the other before being tackled in the Wythenshawe corner. From the Wythenshawe line out, Macclesfield won and drove forward to score again, and adding the two extra points to make it 12-0. From this moment on it was all Macclesfield.
By half time Macclesfield had scored 36 unanswered points making it 36-0. The Wythenshawe lads regrouped at half time, where told what they had to do to get back into the game. For the next 5 minutes Wythenshawe had listen and responded and kept hold of the ball and controlled the game, however a stupid penalty and quick thinking from Macclesfield meant that they scored again, but missed the conversion making it 41-0.
From this point on Macclesfield racked up the points making the final score 74-0. In the end it was a bad day for Wythenshawe, who didn’t put into practice what they worked on during the week, and a Macclesfield team who had a game plan and stuck to it from start to finish.
Some fun points from the weekend:
• Craig ‘2nd Strongest’ Farrell with his very tight fitting shorts, that’s what happens when you turn up late.
• Dave ‘Pops’ Birchenall had a solid game at fullback, making tackles, strong running and good decision making. This earned him the Man of The Match award.
• The Dick of the Day award went to Josh ‘pass to no-one’ Wilde who after doing everything right with teh ball in hand decided to pass it 20 meters backwards to none of his support players.
Next Saturday Wythenshawe make the trip down to Ashton-on-Mersey, to get their season back on track.

Sean ‘Beanie’ Fogarty