Moor stroll to home win over Fleetwood.

Heaton Moor 67 - Fleetwood 0

Moor returned to winning ways this week as, after two weeks of injuries and unavailability, player/coach Keith Young had a somewhat stronger squad to select from. Keeping faith with the youngsters, he fielded the youngest pack in living memory with only hooker Joe James looking old enough to shave.

A surprisingly large Fleetwood pack started well and drove Moor off the first scrum of the game and won all the opening skirmishes at the breakdown. With Young coming out of his recently announced retirement to orchestrate things at fly-half and play his non-kicking game, he began to spread the ball wide and a well timed pass found veteran winger Zander Claassen, who then used his bulk to barge his way over the Fleetwood line for the opening score, allowing scrum-half Shaun Stirrup, who had a fine day with the boot, to make the conversion. The try came against the run of play and seemed to deflate the Fleetwood side whilst increasing the confidence of the home side. The next try came after 18 year-old lock Ben Jones won clean lineout ball and this was fed out to centre Nik Pearson who scored under the posts, making the conversion a formality. Two more first half tries came from flanker Alex Bolland and skipper Nick Smith and with Stirrup converting one of these and kicking a penalty, Moor had a 29-0 lead at the interval.

Scoring resumed immediately after the resumption when, following a good passage of play, prop Craig Buckley popped up in space to take the final pass and touch down. From the restart, the ball was quickly secured and sharp passing found Claassen in space 30 metres out and only a superb tackle from the Fleetwood loosehead prop prevented him from scoring, but the ever-present Jones was on hand to pick up and drive over for another try. Young rang the changes on 60 minutes bringing on lock James McIntosh for the industrious James Ellis, who had a fine game in both the lineout and the loose and also replaced himself with live-wire centre Steve Kershaw, who genuinely believes he is six foot six rather than five foot six. He immediately made inroads into the opposition and the pressure resulted in a scrum on the Fleetwood 5-metre line, producing a pushover try for Smith. With both Pearson and Claassen grabbing a further try apiece and Stirrup kicking another penalty and converting all the second half tries, Moor eventually secured a very comfortable 67-0 victory.