It may not have been their best performance of the season, but Roose Pioneers under-15s made it eight wins out of eight in Division Three of the North West Counties Youth League by defeating Blackbrook Royals 36-10 last Saturday.

This was first versus third in the table and the young Pioneers were expecting a tough game from the St Helens-based side.

Pioneers kicked off in bright sunshine and a great chase from Wright forced an error under pressure. From the resulting scrum, Josh Cohen picked up from loose and forced his way over the line, with Ellis Archer converting.

The game was quite a scrappy affair with both sides making plenty of errors, although Blackbrook did move the ball around quite well at times.

It was from one of these flowing moves that the Roose’s defence was stretched and Connor Travis showed good strength to carry two would-be tacklers over the line with him 6-4.

Pioneers began to get a little more cohesion in attack, as Cohen was held up, but the following play the ball saw Taylor Roberts jump out and find Wright, who touched down.

Great yardage runs by Ethan Hadwin and Tom Farren then resulted in an unconverted try for the speedster Young.

The next try came from Farren who was having a good game, with great lead-up work from Barrett and Roberts again being the provider, with Archer back on cue with the conversion for 22-10, which is how the score remained at half-time.

The Pioneers claimed the first score of the second half as Cohen went over for his second try of the game after a good run from Archer, the latter converting, 28-10.

Roose were awarded a penalty bang in front of the posts with 15 minutes to go and decided to take the two points on offer and Archer duly obliged.

This decision came as a mark of respect to Blackbrook, who with some wiser choices in attack could quite easily have made it a much tighter contest.

Pioneers, however, had last say as Farren went over for his double, after good work from Young in the build-up. Archer converted for his sixth goal of a rare game in which he didn’t score himself.