The Bracknell U13s Girls rugby team have been building up playing numbers over the season which started in September. The girls and parents wanted to finish the great season off with a rugby tour if possible, so we set about finding a location and team to play and managed to pull a plan together for 10 girls and families to go to Bristol.
On Saturday 7th May we set off for Bristol where we met up at our accommodation and dropped off our bags and the girls collected their tour goodie bag. Once we all arrived we set off to watch Bristol ladies v Quins ladies which kicked off at 2:30 pm and the girls and parents enjoyed a high scoring game which saw Harlequins defeating Bristol Bears 43-26 at a sunny Ashton Gate to secure all five points and head back to South West London with smiles on their faces. The girls and parents had a great time and the atmosphere was fantastic.

We set off back to our accommodation for some refreshments and to freshen up prior to then meeting up for a meal. We then played some games with the girls working together in teams. It was a fun and entertaining evening and we all went to bed with some great memories from the day.

Sunday started off with a great breakfast to fuel up for the day’s activities and this was followed by some crazy golf at an indoor centre in the heart of Bristol. This was as competitive as ever with a large amount of fun. No course records were broken on the day!

We returned to the hotel and it was game time. So the girls all got changed and we checked out and we took the short journey to North Bristol rugby club where we were met by their U13s. They had kindly arranged for their club to be open as the season had just finished the week before.

The parents enjoyed the club house hospitality and the coaches prepared the girls for the match which was due to kick off at 1:30 pm. The match was played with adapted out of season RFU rules and these were explained to both sets of girls. The match kicked off and it was a fast-paced game with both teams trying to understand each other’s game plan. North Bristol were applying more and more pressure and they converted the pressure into the 1st try of the game. The Bracknell side needed to bounce straight back so they kicked the ball to North Bristol and managed to pin them in their own half and the pressure created and turn over and the Bracknell girls crossed the white line for their 1st try. The 1st half was a real arm wrestle with both teams working really hard in defence and the attack was struggling to make many easy yards. Bracknell’s pressure started to pay off and at halftime, the score was 4-2 to Bracknell. The halftime talk was very simple - to keep playing your game and keep smiling and working hard in defence.

The second half started with Bracknell scoring very quickly off some strong direct running and then moving the ball quickly to the wing and this allowed our wingers the space to attack and run in untouched. The girls realised the quicker we played the more space we had to attack and had scored 4 quick tries. The North Bristol girls realised they needed to stop the flow of tries and increased their energy in defence with more double touches and improved line speed which put pressure on the Bracknell girls and this led to turnovers and tries for Bristol. The game became very tight with no one scoring for several minutes whilst the team tried to work out how to unlock the stalemate. We decided to attack the space behind the North Bristol line and this forced them to defend deeper and we managed to exploit some holes in their defence to score a few more times. The games finished 10 – 3 to Bracknell.

The North Bristol parents put on a BBQ and the girls could buy sweet cones.

So we all went home fully fed and watered after a fantastic weekend in Bristol.

Want to get involved all contact details on the Bracknell rugby club website.