Under 9s - Victorious Again

We entered two teams, Green (A) and Black (B), in the Reading Tournament on Sunday and both teams were unbeaten throughout the competition!

The Black team played a very creditable tournament and were very unlucky not to progress to the semi-finals, in that they were unbeaten, drawing all three of their pool games, including one against the eventual losing finalists (more of that later!). The game against Reading was particularly unlucky, our team took an early lead and then proceeded to come close to scoring a second try on a number of occasions, only to concede a break away try in the last move of the match.

The seven minute games scheduled for the pool matches allowed little time to settle into a game, especially considering that the contact version of the game is new to all the boys. All the boys played well and were fully committed in the tackle and with the ball in hand and an improvement in decision making and clearing the opposition out at the ruck rather than all trying to pick the ball up would have seen us win at least one or two of the games. We saw particularly strong tackling and driving from Alec who scored one of our tries and was probably our player of the day. There was also strong running from the two new boys, Brett and Callum, who scored a try each and from the two Jordan’s (R & W).

The Green team ran out winners of the tournament for the second year on the trot. The fact that they won all of their games without conceding one try speaks for itself and all the boys involved should be very proud of their performance. The main difference in the performance of this team compared to the Blacks was the way they recycled the ball in the tackle. Rugby is a very simple game when the tackled player gets the ball to the ground on the right side of the ruck and the next one or two players clear out the opposition to give the scrum half good quick ball. The Green team excelled in this area and minimised the number of times we were turned over in attack. In defence the same pressing qualities that won us many a game of tag rugby were evident with aggressive defence not giving the opposition a chance to get any momentum going forward.

Whilst all the boys played well, mention must go to the captain for the day Bayley and Jordan S for their support running and work at the rucks and to Paddy who has quickly developed the knack of ripping the ball away from the opposition at the maul to turn defence into attack. Try scorers were Paddy (3), Bayley, James and Lewis (2), Jake and Jordan S (1). The final against Reading Abbey was a tense game that we won 1-0 with the referee’s desire to keep play flowing at all costs not doing anyone any favours as the game lost its structure. On balance this probably helped the opposition who weren’t as technically good as our team and we ran out worthy winners.

All in all a great day for the Bracknell U9s who have taken to the contact game very well and look set go from strength to strength.