Bury 3 Tranmere Rovers 5: Despite a dramatic opening day loss to Tranmere Rovers in the Youth Alliance League, Neil Hanks was delighted with the form shown by the extremely young side that graced the Lower Gigg turf.

Bury's Head of Youth was by no means down-hearted with the 5-3 defeat, a scoreline that didn't do justice to the inexperienced side that ended the game with 10 men after the unfortunate dismissal of goalkeeper Aaron Grundy. He said:

"Despite losing, I'm absolutely delighted with the performance. I would imagine that there's probably never been a younger youth team side sent out by this club in all its history, and despite the setback of going 2-0 down and then having a man sent off, the lads belied their inexperience to dominate the match. We only had two second years in the team, five first years and then the rest was largely made up of non-contract players from last year's under 16s, as well as including Lee Peatfield who's only 15 and Ryan Hall who is only 14. Ryan actually created the first two goals, and he's coming on leaps and bounds."

With Tranmere taking an early two goal lead, Bury fought back to 2-2 with goals from in-form duo Nicky Adams and Ryan Maloney, although Rovers snatched another goal on the stroke of half time to go ahead again. Another strike shortly after the break stretched their advantage, but when Maloney narrowed the gap to one, it was all Shakers, as Hanks explained:

"We were really in the ascendancy when we pulled it back to 4-3, and at that stage I really thought we'd equalise and then go on to win the game. However, the thing that set Tranmere apart was the fact that they had a lightning fast left winger, who was like a greyhound, and they just kept knocking balls over the top that he would race onto and tare past our defence. It was from a ball like that we suffered the red card. Aaron came out of his box as last man to try and meet the striker as he chased the lofted ball, and when the shot came in, he did the instinctive thing, even though he was out of the box, and that was to handle the ball. It was very unlucky for the lad but he had to go, and we ended up playing Shaun Roscoe, normally a left sided midfielder, as our keeper for the remainder of the game, and unfortunately they scored again to kill us off."

Hanks, however, sees the game as a great start to the season. He added:

"After that performance, I can certainly see a bright future for this side. Certainly, we'll have a very good youth team next year when the young lads have a little more experience, and I'm confident that we'll go on to do very well again this year. There's no pressure on these lads to go out and emulate last season's league win, and I feel that even if this young side gets into the second merit division and finishes bottom that will be an achievement, because we'll have got ourselves to a higher level than last year."