It was great to see league rugby back at Coopers Park on Sunday the 5th of September as Stafford Colts hosted Wolverhampton Colts.

Considering the very warm sunny conditions both teams played, what turned out to be a very entertaining and evenly matched game, at a blistering pace.

Stafford went ahead early in the game when James Milan went over on the left and converted his try from a good distance. Stafford scoring appeared to stir Wolverhampton into action that they took control of the game for the remainder of the half with Stafford’s defensive line giving too much time to the Wolverhampton attack which resulted in Wolverhampton running in a total of 4 tries with 2 conversions despite some valiant individual defending from Stafford. The score at half time was Stafford 7 - 24 Wolverhampton

After the half time break, a reinvigorated Stafford came out of the blocks much faster, with two of their replacements scoring 3 tries, the first unconverted try from Alfie O'Brien and the second two from Tom Kirby, converted by Connor McCulloch and James Milan. The impact of Alfie and Tom coming on appeared to have turned the tide with this flurry of tries bringing Stafford back into a narrow lead of 26 to 24.

After the water break in second half the heat and intensity of the play started to show on both teams with mistakes starting to creep into the game. A break through the middle from Wolverhampton and the resulting converted try pushed them ahead by 5 points and despite some good opportunities to steal it at the end from Stafford the final score remained 26 to 31.

A great game of competitive rugby which was enjoyed by a good crowd at Coopers Park who quite rightly applauded both teams off the pitch. Some excellent rugby being played by all players considering the conditions and most importantly the fact that some of the players haven't played competitive rugby for over 18 months.