Gladiators ruthless against Heysham Atoms

A long trip to Morecombe to face Heysham in a rerun of the close cup game for the Gladiators Under 14s, couldnt have been any different to the previous game as the young stars found their ruthless streak to romp over the tired Heysham team.

The game started well with a deep kick off from Matt Richards going out in goal to gift the ball to Chester, the Chester pack started to draw the defence in with some hard drives at the try line before the backs spread the ball wide to Haig Bainbridge who scored out wide, the extras were missed. Straight from the resulting kick off Ben Turner received the kick off and scored a trademark try breaking through the defenders to score from 60-70 metres out, Ethan Bainbridge adding the extras.

The next kick off saw an error early in the set to test the Chester defence for the first time, but resolute defence forced another error and a strong return from prop Peter Bennington but Chester on the front foot enabling Liam Walker to grab a try out wide with Ethan adding the extras. From kick off Chester gave aknock on in the first tackle and Heysham capatilised scoring a try out wide to open their accoutn and make the score 4 - 16.

Chester Kicked off and Dan Tabberer made consecutives tackles forcing an error by Heysha, but Chester could capatiise and Heysham had the ball again when Rhys Hughes stepped up making 3 tackles on the bounces to reduce the progress by Heysham. The next set saw Chester play some great Rugby League shipping the ball wide through Joe Wilcock, Sepp Karnick and Ethan Bainbridge to winger Carter Foster who jinked inside but held out just short of the line by the Heysham defence but a quick play the ball and scoot from Luke Johnson saw him dive over to extend the Chester lead to 4 - 20.

Matt Richards caught the ball on the full from kick off and raced through the defence stepping players and accelerating past half way, the young forwards of Theo McAndrew and Henry Jones set up a good platform and Ethan Bainbridge was able to capatilise to score.

Heysham then caught the Chester team napping in defence on the goal line to score a try and conversion to bring the score to 10 - 24. Ben Turner then scored another outstanding solo try to close down the half and bring the score to 10 - 28.

Chester started the second half strong with Ben grabbing another try with Tom Fullalove adding the extras. Next up the ball got shipped out wide to Dan Tabberer who stepped past one defender and then cut over the line to score again Tom was on target with the conversion from a difficult angle. Straight from the kick off Harry MacMilan then managed to find a gap in the tiring defence and he raced away to score and extend Chester's lead to 10 - 46 with plenty of time remaining.

It wasnt long until Chester were on the scoresheet again this time Haig linked with his brother on the left edge with a great pass that allowed Ethan to tiptoe along the wing and score. Heysham were starting to flag now and some outstanding defensive pressure from Henry Jones stopped Heysham gaining any momentum and Henry was rewarded by the Chester team spreading the ball from right to left to set him free to score in the corner.

In the last 5 minutes Chester added salt to the wounds firstly from Haig Bainbridge who barged through and raced away to score under the sticks with Tom adding the extras, but Chester were not finished there, in the last set of the game Heysham entered the Chester 20 and looked certain to score in the corner but a solid 1:1 tackle saw the ball spill out and Ethan Bainbridge collected on his own 10, running 5 metres before punting the ball into midfield, his brother Haig raced onto the loose ball collected and sprinted away to score under the sticks with Tom Fullalove converting from in front of the sticks on the final whistle to bring the scoreline to a rather impressive 10 - 74 to Chester.