U14's bring home the W from Bedford

This week we headed up to Bedford to play what was now a friendly, but was originally arranged as a Pool match until the HML removed the fixture from our schedule. Since we have not played each other before we decided to keep the fixture though. We were billed to play their B team, but in the end they fielded a mixture of A’s and B’s to try to even the game up a bit, as even with the bare minimum of 15 players available on our side, we proved too strong for their B’s alone.

The first 5 minutes saw us camped in their half, scrummaging brilliantly, and putting pressure on them constantly with our linespeed which has been worked on extensively of late, and is really paying off. The first break came from Matt doing his trademark pick and go off the back of a ruck, only to be brought down by a high tackle, and with the ref playing advantage, some quick thinking by Josh S saw him scoop up the ball and charge for the line. A beautiful conversion by Danny in strong wind saw us go 0-7 up.

Our next score was a lovely passage of play involving some strong carries and deft handling skills by Connor B to Josh S to Will F to finish. Lovely to watch, and the boys were on fire! Two tries from Connor B were to follow, one from a scrum on the right wing spreading the ball wide to the left, and one virtually from his own 22m line up the left wing. With another couple of lovely conversions from Danny, we went into the half time break 0-26 to the good.

It was clear that to avoid a rout, Bedford had to ring the changes, and that they did with a raft of A team players joining the fray for the second half. The improvement in skill levels was immediate, with the home side getting a score on the board within 2 minutes of the restart, and showing a much better match for our lads in the scrum. However, Datch dug deep and put in some big tackles and some nice passages of play taking us down to their try-line once again, where Sam was able to use his size and dominance to power over for our 5th try of the day. With some late injuries to Josh S and Josh B, and Bedford loaning us some players, they came back at us towards the end scoring another 2 converted tries, but it was too little too late, and we went home with the “W” 17-31.

Great job Datch Under 14’s, and for his superb show of kicking skills, both from the tee and from hand, and for his clever decision making on the day, Danny took home the Man of the Match award.