Club Rugby: Cooke 45 Academy 12 Preseason Friendly

We are currently carrying out a necessary behind-the-scenes upgrade to how images are stored and delivered on The Front Row Union Sports. With over 770,000 images on the site, we are moving our entire image library to a dedicated cloud storage service. This means images will load faster for you, regardless of where you are in the world, and the site will be more reliable overall.

As we are working on three separate versions of images during the offload process, the site cache sometimes struggles to keep up with which version to display and occasionally post grid images or complete galleries may fail to appear. This is a temporary side effect of the migration process — the image exists and is safe, it is simply in the process of being moved to its new home and identified as being there. A refresh of the page will usually bring them back, however, if it does not please contact john@thefrontrowunion.com stating clearly the post address and we will restore it as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and appreciate your patience.

We expect the bulk of the image migration to be completed by the end of June 2026, with a fully upgraded version of the site ready to launch in August 2026. Once that work is done, the site will be noticeably faster, images will load more reliably, and you will not see any further disruption of this kind. Thank you for your continued support of The Front Row Union Sports.

Both Cooke and Academy used enlarged squads in this preseason friendly at Shaw’s Bridge on Saturday afternoon.

Report and images by Bob Given Photography.

Cooke enjoyed a sparkling first half against Academy.

In a devastating first half Cooke amassed 6 tries through, Falmaka Vave (2), , (2) and , 5 converted by .

With rotations of squads, the second half was a much more even affair.

went over for Academy with an unconverted try, following a line out maul, shortly after the break.

Elliott Donaldson slides in for the final score of the game.

Cooke responded with a George Robb unconverted try mid way through the half and Academy had the last say in the game’s final move with an try, converted by .

Gallery Below

Corrections

Drop us a note below if there are any corrections required in this article.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨