Wirral RFC battled out to a 45-55 victory against Cornish side Launceston on Saturday 6th of May. This was at the six ways stadium in Worcester as they were crowned the inaugural Papa John’s Community Cup Champions.
This is a brand-new competition that came after feedback was given from players across the league indicating they wanted to condense the regular Rugby Union league and have a cup competition at the end.
Wirral couldn’t have had a worse start to the game with Launceston taking a 12-0 lead early on. They did manage to find their feet later into the first half and with 15 minutes of purely dominant play Wirral managed to make it 26-12 with tries scored by Mark Williams, Jacob Mitchell, Tom Akehurst, and the club captain Chris Crowley.
Coming into the second half Wirral continued to score and made it 19-45 after more tries from Mitchell and Matt Ringer.
After taking a larger lead, head coach Craig Harvey decided to rotate the squad to give every player a chance to contribute in the final.
However, this did not stop Launceston from giving up as they fought their way back into the game managing to reduce the deficit, but with a try and conversion along with a penalty from 50 metres, Wirral managed to hold on to win the Trophy and bring it back to Merseyside.
After the final whistle, Wirral RFC fans took to twitter to express their joy about the club’s achievement with user @TimothHodson1 tweeting “Well done lads. Cracking win.” Another twitter user called @stephen_stuart1 had this to say, “Fantastic result, well done to everyone, hope you enjoyed the celebrations.”
The celebratory messages didn’t stop there with many sports clubs around the Wirral and Cheshire sending their praise to the rugby club with Cheshire RFU retweeting the clubs post saying, “Well done @WirralRFU”. Wirral Cricket Club also joined in saying “Well Done to everyone involved”.
Wirral Grammar School which taught many of the squad players, also sent their congratulation on twitter saying “Congrats to our Old Boy’s Club! Great to see so many OW’s involved! And some not so old! Congrats @WirralRFC and enjoy your evening.”
The trophy was a great ending to a productive season for Wirral RFC with a seventh-place finish. This was an improvement on their 10th place finish last season in the previously known North Premier, before it was reformed to the Regional 1 North West.
The club will be hoping they can take this momentum into next season and push further up the table.