For the second week in a row, Southport travelled away to a South Manchester side destined for higher pastures, and again suffered a convincing defeat.

Manchester Medics were relocated to the Lancashire and Cheshire leagues last season at their request, to reduce their travel, and were required to start at the bottom of the league system. On the basis of this result and others so far this season and last, Champions of Division 3, it won’t be long before they attain higher league status with teams of a similar standing scattered far and wide which will involve travelling…..

Whatever, what is without doubt is that a Southport side missing several regulars according to coach Mike Smith was outplayed by a younger, fitter side who demonstrated outstanding quality in their ranks, but humility in victory.

For their part, Southport stuck to the task throughout, and despite conceding four early tries in the match, all scored as a result of excellent handling and support running, put together some good passages of play themselves. Powerful runs from Sam Cross and attacking options from Ollie Brown capped a concerted Southport comeback, however never quite enough to get them on the scoreboard. A late Medics try in the first half however finished the game as a competition by half time, and left Southport to regroup and play for pride.

To their credit, Southport continued to show heart throughout the match, and cover tackling from Anderson and determination from second half substitutes Henry Brain, Craig Pacey and Will Scott-Abbott meant Southport refused to give in easily. Medics however had ability throughout their squad and their support in open play provided an offload option at every breakdown, allowing their try scoring to continue.

Southport did have chances themselves; Chris Drescher collected the ball from a perfectly placed Jake McMullen kick off, but was unable to collect his chip through. Gareth Lang in the back row, continued to fight to the end, Dan Whalen mustered the backs at every opportunity and the young Southport front row of Dan Aindow, Calum Monaghan and Tom Smith worked hard at every scrum and will surely gain valuable experience from the encounter.

Whilst of little comfort in defeat, Southport can at least claim a modicum of credit in that Medics star Marcus Clarke is from the town and was once in the Junior set up at Waterloo Road. Unfortunately a serious injury has kept him out for the game a couple of seasons but he has shown great character to come back to his best as his fellow Sandgrounders found out to their cost.

Southport Chairman Andrew Carney commented that “The Medics were just at another level - they played superb athletic and classy rugby - all credit to them” and in particular congratulated Marcus on his performance. Marcus responded “Cheers Guys, it was a good game today. Hopefully we'll get one over Bowden next week... Our old playing grounds until they had 'no more space' this season!!!”

Southport First XV can speak with some authority on this fixture having also been walloped at Bowden the week before. Whilst Bowden v Manchester Medics looks to be an epic encounter worthy of higher league status, Southport captain George Baumber will be spending the week harnessing the good spirit demonstrated by his team in the games against these teams to put this into getting the season back on track with a visit from bottom-of-the-table Wallasey to Waterloo Rd on Saturday (KO 3pm).

Follow up e-mail at 21.01

Hi Ian: the following is a report from the u14s;

Under 14s

Leigh 40 Southport 12 by Howard Cosgrove-Moore

Sunday was one of those days where Southport’s opponents were clearly fired-up from the off and made the most of their home field advantage. It was also one of those games where sometimes things conspire against yourself when most of the hard work had been done.

In many ways it was a shame that circumstances meant that this was the first competitive U-14 game of the season for many of the Southport squad. As a team they were clearly ring-rusty, and didn’t always bringing the lessons from the training ground onto the pitch, but there were plenty of individual performances that bode well for the rest of the season.

How to summarise the game in one sentence? Most Southport supporters watching from the side-lines would agree that the score line didn’t reflect the overall difference in performance between the teams in a game that was made up of three distinct periods.

The first finished 0-0. Twenty minutes of sound and mid-field fury, with flying tackles and total commitment from several Southport backs to fight the Leigh players off and secure the ball – forwards take note!
After having a series of penalties awarded against Southport and giving away scrums with what were generally unfortunate knock-ons, just before the end of the period found Leigh on the away side 5m line right under the posts. No one gave up, Southport fought hard to regain the ball and were unlucky not to score on the counter.

The whole team deserves credit for the defensive play in the first period but there was a worrying theme developing as despite all this effort Southport were losing the ball too often at the breakdown. Leigh were half a second faster at clearing us out and their forwards just seemed to want it more!

The second twenty followed the pattern of the first but Leigh managed to break or dodge tackles to run in converted tries at both the beginning and the end of the period. Unfortunately a Southport purple patch coincided with the rain shower, so despite the good work by both second rows in securing the ball and a number of strong runs many attacking moves ended in a fumble or the ball popping forwards in the tackle. Again there was little to fault in individuals’ performances in attack or defence but the difficulty was that Southport’s powerful runners would find themselves isolated and without the support they should have expected to be with them. Three, four or five excellent phases of play were often put together but against this hard tackling, determined and organised Leigh team it needed several more to score.
There were wholesale changes for the last period with the fixed-five being completely replaced along with most of the back line. Initially these changes showed themselves as disorganisation with Leigh running in another try in the corner. Soon however there was a change in fortune. Josh as Southport beat the feed with the sort of hooking that the latest rules changes have made possible again and stormed over the try line – just desserts.

The away side were coming back into the game! Leigh were clearly rattled and a series of powerful runs well supported by the pack notched up another try!

Perhaps Southport became over confident as the game seemed destined to end as a draw, if not a Southport victory! Unfortunately Leigh regained their composure and made some very big hits to keep Southport out and regain the initiative - but they were still very lucky to score from a scrambled try and a runner who danced along the touchline twice before the final whistle was blown.