C teams fisrt contact festivla

Okay, so that might be a bit over the top. But it was the day 12 out of 13 of the boys of Bracknell's U9 C team played their first full contact rugby festival at Maidenhead - the one exception being Matthew Knight who played his part in the Windsor festival the previous weekend.

The squad consisted of Max Evans, Paddy Casserly, Benjamin Wright, Archie Mills, George Gray, Tom Smith, Will Hullis, Matthew Knight, Jake Pollard, Charlie Pilcher, Harry Jones, Jack McLaren-Tosh and Ross Hickman.

First up was Henley B. If ever there was a game of 2 halves, this was it. Henley started very strongly and scored 3 quick trys without Reply. I must admit the boys looked a bit shell-shocked at half-time. But we reminded them they were playing against a top team and encouraged them to just go out and enjoy the 2nd half. And boy did they do that - winning the 2nd half 2-0 and only just losing the match 2-3.

Next up was Marlow B. This was again a very even contest. For the majority of the match, the 2 teams traded blows and this was reflected in a 2-2 scoreline with only a couple of minutes to play. We then scored what we thought was the decisive try. Only for one of the Marlow boys to score a stunning individual try with what turned out to be the final play of the game. So the spoils were shared - a 3-3 draw.

The 3rd game was against Newbury B. The obvious improvement the boys had shown in the first 2 games was doubled, if not trebled in this game! It proved to be very one-sided as Newbury struggled to cope with our free-flowing running rugby. We looked like we could score with every attack and our excellent defence restricted Newbury to only a couple of half chances. I'm afraid I got a bit over excited and lost track of the final scoreline. I believe it was a 4-0 win.

I'm afraid we came back down to earth with a bang in the 4th game against Brighton B. They were simply too good for us. We told the boys there's no disgrace in losing to a stronger team