Bracknell March On @ Marlow

Dear All,

When contemplating our first four fixtures of the season, consisting of massively challenging Surrey, Middlesex and Bucks Division 1 opposition, it was clear that by the end of September, one of three scenarios of would most likely define the tone of our entire 2014/2015 season.
In the first, we would have lost all four games and undone the good work done during the summer, forcing us as coaches to re-assess our plans and reset our goals for the season. Alternatively, we would have had a mixed bag of wins and losses, setting us up for another reasonable season, pretty much like we had last year as Under 13’s with highs and lows but a real sense that we could have done a bit better. The final scenario, the one we dared barely dreamed of, was a performance of such calibre that demonstrated, both in terms of self-belief and on-field ability, what we are actually capable of as a team and as a squad.
Four wins from four starts was exactly this dream scenario and while the wins mean little in themselves, it is the way in which the 26 boys that have worn the A-team shirt so far this season came together and dealt with challenge after challenge collectively and came through every time, that gives us as a coaching group a real sense of excitement about the potential of this group of young rugby players.
Marlow RFC are a club packed with talented and capable rugby players, well coached and very much up for repeating the win they achieved against us last season when they beat us on our own pitch at Calfridus, the last time that we ever lost a game at that venue incidentally, now over a year ago. We, on the other hand, were unbeaten in our first three outings but these wins had come at a price, with six A-team regulars on the butchers bill and another three unavailable due to various other sporting, cultural and leisure activities, meaning the depth of our squad was to be truly tested by one of our oldest rivals.
The game started as expected with Marlow putting us under significant pressure with their big, hard-running backs, recycling well at the breakdown and running multi-phase attacks at us. Our defence creaked and groaned but didn’t break and it was as a the result of a particularly resolute piece of defence that JJ Paling was able to repeat Sam Clough’s brilliance of last week and conjure up a heartbreaker for Marlow and an confidence boosting try for us against the run of play, converted by Matthew Dalrymple.
JJ’s try and some very robust scrummaging by the forwards got us back into a game that had been largely dominated by Marlow until that point but as we settled down, our forwards gave us momentum with some very strong carries and in midfield Tom Day ran hard at the opposition midfield all day. As soon as we established forward momentum, we slung it wide and it were it not for some excellent scrambling defence by the Marlow backs, we could have profited greatly out wide early on.
Frustrated out wide, we went back to our forwards, putting big men down the inside channels and using the pick-and-drive and one-off runners to sap the energy out of the Marlow forwards on a warm and sunny day. Eventually the dam wall broke and Paling was in for his second try on the stroke of half time with the score at 12-0. Marlow came back us hard after the break and nearly scored from the kick-off, but were narrowly denied. This was the last time that they were to threaten our line, however, and as we used the prodigious boot of Paling and some excellent box-kicking from stand-in scrumhalf Dalrymple to keep the ball in front of our forwards and control territory.
With good field position, and our forwards putting enormous pressure on the gain-line, our confidence on attack grew leading to a fine forward's try from Kane O'Leary before more hard running saw the Marlow defence sucked in as the second half neared its conclusion allowing debutant Tim Cato to exploit overlapping numbers on attack to get over the Marlow line, with his try converted by Dalrymple.
The forwards had the final word, however, with Alexander Robinson busting strongly through the middle of the tiring Marlow defence and storming up the centre of the pitch, only to be dragged down just short of the line, but managing to pop a short pass to Matt Dalrymple running on his shoulder for the final try, converted by the try scorer for a final score of 31-0.
While it was JJ Paling and Matt Dalrymple that got the lion's share of the points on the day, special mention needs to be made of the pack, who dominated the set pieces and put in a massive shift in the tight loose on attack and in defence. The loose forwards were fantastic on cover defence and Kyle Bruwer and Alexander Robinson were massive ball in hand. Josh Johnson at ten was cool on attack and unflustered on defence, even when under immense pressure, with three quarters Sam Faulkner, Tim Cato, Matthew Bowers and Toby Parker were excellent all-round with the nil score line evidence of their commitment to policing the outside channels on defence and Tim’s try a highlight of the day. Skipper Ben Clark kept the boys’ heads in the game and their energy levels up on a hot, dry day.
The man of the match, however was Sam Clough who put in a magnificent shift marking the two strong, hard-running Marlow centres out of the game with tackle after tackle in the midfield. Not content to sit back and let the potent Marlow backs run at him, he showed that he has a few tricks of his own with some excellent pace and guile and made a good few line-breaks of his own. Sam has been a star all season, and today he was our man-of-the-match!
With our September examination behind us, and four excellent wins in the bag, we have a bit of break next weekend with 11 boys away at county training and the rest of the squad at the Reading festival for a bit of fun. I suspect that come May next year. we will look back on these four weeks of sunny warm-weather rugby as the point in our season where our boys discovered their true potential. It doesn’t get much easier form here on in with London Irish, Beaconsfield and Chobham waiting for us before Christmas, not to mention the start of the Berkshire Division 1 league in October and the unfinished business that we have Newbury and Reading RFC’s respectively therein but regardless of what the season has in store for us, we will always have the memory of what 26 very special young men achieved across four sunny Sundays in three counties in the autumn of 2014.

Kind regards,
Andy