Datchworth Under 11's win at Harrow

Datchworth Under 11's journeyed south down the A1(M) to play Harrow RFC for the first time, and it proved a fruitful morning!

Our numbers were down, with only 10 players available due to Remembrance Sunday events, but Harrow were affected worse with only 8 players. Playing two 20 minute games during the morning, Thomas Beechey volunteered to play for Harrow in the first game, and Cameron Smith did so for the second. Well done to those 2 boys for volunteering, and for not taking it easy playing against their team mates!!

Straight from the off in the first game, Harrow proved to be a very tough, physical side to play against but our lads didn't take it lying down. The first half was a very closely fought affair, with some great turnover work especially from Matthew Rates who ripped the ball in contact on several occasions. With the game starting to get a little scrappy, and going into the half time break 1 try to zero down, it would have been easy for our lads to drop their heads, but they fought back strongly in the second half.

Straight from the second half whistle both teams played with passion, and we got some lovely running rugby on the go with plenty of soft passes and offloads in the tackle area, and some nice runs from Thomas Paine & Spike Howard. Spencer Bayford got on the end of one those passes, and made a great run down the line to bring things level at 1-1. Several times throughout the game he also made some great clearance kicks, and even the odd dummy kick to throw off the Harrow defence. On one occasion one of the Harrow players made the mistake of trying to charge down one of Spencer "the boot" Bayford's kicks, and unfortunately then ended up sitting out of the rest of the morning's play after making a close inspection of the ball with his face.

A little while later, after some hugely powerful play from our possible future front rows William Bacon, Matthew Rates and Isaac Byrne, Isaac made a lovely charge through contact followed by a clever back handed offload to William Goff who charged down the line sidestepping 2 players for the winning try, making it 2-1 Datchworth.

After a short break for the 2 minute silence at 11am, where our boys did us proud once again with exemplary behaviour, we were into our second game of the morning.

Again we showed that we are working well as a team, and getting better at the ruck in terms of protecting the ball, as well as driving over it to win turnover ball. Harrow took first blood however with a storming run from one of their faster players through several of our defence players, but William Goff chased him down and managed to tackle him from behind right on the line, although it was a metre too late as he touched it down. Later in the half however, he was able to make amends as he ran in a powerful drive through contact to get his second of the morning, making it 1-1 at the break.

The second half saw Harrow get their 2nd try, but great link play between Spencer Bayford and Matthew "Ripper" Rates saw Matthew run over for a great try to make it 2-2. With the final seconds of the game to play, and with Datchworth camped 5 metres from the Harrow line and a free pass to Datch, Isaac "Bruiser" Byrne was screaming for the ball to come his way for him to do his trademark charge through the defence, but a misunderstanding saw the ball get thrown out of play, and we were denied the chance of our second win of the morning, and had to settle for the draw.

A great morning's rugby, with every player on the field playing their part and giving it their all. After consultation with the parents it was unanimously decided that William Goff would take the Player of the Week trophy - well done William - and well done Datchworth Under 11's!