A great afternoon of RL in Ince began with the 20th staging of the RNRL State Of Origin fixture once again sponsored by QinetiQ. A guard of honour was provided by the Wigan Sea Cadets with Standards being paraded by the local RBL branch all adding to the occasion.

The format was basically 20 players per side to give as many as possible to get valuable game time as we move towards Summer leave with places in the 2024 Inter Services up for grabs. The Maroons were on the front foot from the get go scoring a converted try after barely 6 minutes. The next 20 minutes or so were scoreless until Dave Brown took the ball from a scrum breakdown to power through the Easts defence to score, converted by James Teixeira 12:0. The Blues played some good Rugby but a brace of converted tries stretched the Wests lead to 24:0 as the first half ran down. Some relief for the Blues came on 35 minutes, another score from a scrum saw the Easts td under the posts and with a straight forward conversion it closed the gap. That was how the half ended with the Wests comfortably ahead by 24:6.

The Wests continued their good form into the second half with two more tries out wide on their left which were brilliantly converted by James Tilley, 36:6 going into the final 10 minutes of the game. The Blues pressed for some more points of their own scoring after 72 minutes under the posts which was converted 36:12. The final score of the game went to the Blues, a kick on the last was fumbled by the Wests and the Blues took full advantage winning the 40 metre sprint to the line, with the conversion the scores closed to 36:18 which is how it was at the full time whistle.

MVP for the two sides were Sean McKervail and Jack Bartlett for the Maroons and Blues respectively
A great win for the Wests bringing their number of Origin wins to 7 against the Easts 13 victories since the first match back in 2002.
RNRL has invested heavily in a VEO video system which was used for the first time at the Origin match. Whilst the system is designed specifically for match analysis the footage from Saturdays game can be viewed at

https://app.veo.co/matches/374dfbd3-16dc-4c3f-b90a-3705e747f241/

Once again, the Ince Rose Bridge club were great hosts and congratulations to their NCL side who took the spoils in the days second game with an emphatic 44-6 win over Hull Dockers taking the Bridge into 5th place in the NCL Div 1 table.