Bolton Rugby Club Amazon girls under-12s and U14s made the short trip up the M61 to Preston Grasshoppers who were hosting the most recent Northern Girls Network event last weekend.

With 18 girls available at U14s age group, the Bolton side was by far the biggest squad of those attending.

The first game was against ‘old foes’ Littleborough who the Amazons played earlier in the season and lost heavily 55-5. This time it was a different game as the Amazons’ defensive work has improved since that defeat. Littleborough are great team around the breakdown and started to get on top almost immediately, but Bolton stood fast with great tackling by Raid Hodgkinson, Holly Turner, Betty Weall and Lizzie Barrow.

They pressed hard and with 10 minutes gone Eilidh Burns, playing scrum-half, weaved her way through the Littleborough defence to score.

The game was very even between the two sides but after sustained pressure in the Bolton 22, Littleborough broke through to score their first of two tries.

Substitutions were made for Bolton with Philippa Irving and Sofia Reis-Coop, who was playing her first game for the club, came on with Barrow switching to scrum-half. And Bolton scored their second try through Jasmine Cox, picking up the ball and seeing Tope Oyeside was free. She passed the ball and there was no stopping her, as she ran a third of the pitch to dot down between the posts. Captain Iona Barnes converted the try.

The final score was 12-12 and the captain’s choice was Hodgkinson in the forwards and try scorer Oyeside in the backs.

In the second U14s game, Bolton came up against a combined Glossop, Chester and Caldy team who joined together to make 15-a-side.

Bolton started the better and were soon on the scoreboard with a try which started with Burns in their 22. Several rucks later, after a sterling run by the in-form Erin Shaw, the ball was passed through the hands from Barnes to Reis-Coop and eventually into the hands of Cox, who darted round underneath the posts from the right wing. Barnes converted the try to make it 7-0 to Bolton.

Reis-Coop then gathered the ball on the left and ran the whole length of the field only to put the ball down short of the try line. Fortunately for her she realised her mistake quickly gathering the ball up and scoring over the correct line.

The combined Chester team started to grow into the game and were soon back in it as two scores brought them level.

The Bolton girls were starting to tire and two more tries by the combined team in the last five minutes won it 24-12. Captains choice for the second game was Amelia Crook for the forwards and for the backs was Reis-Coop.

The parents choice for player of the two games was Betty Weall. The coaches award for best player went to Erin Shaw.

Two of the Bolton U12s Amazons headed to the development day at Preston Grasshoppers - Eve Barrow and Maddie Iredale.

Although missing some of their team-mates they were taken under the wing of Rochdale and Burnley coaches and participated in seven-a-side games with teams from Southport, Rochdale, Preston and Burnley.

The pair played well with both carrying out some good tackles.

Eve succeeded in scoring two tries with Maddie scoring her first ever try.