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Mini Colts Tournament

Mini Colts Tournament

Sean Mills10 Dec 2018 - 19:08
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It was an early morning for the H&D U17

One of the boys was unusually late and when the team arrived at his house he had walked out of his door and got his jumper stuck in his front door in front of the minibus. This started the trip off with a bit of banter for everyone and got everyone’s spirits uplifted for the tournament and ready to have some fun on the long journey to stowmarket.

When we arrived we were greeted with some familiar faces from Clacton who would play with us for the day and immediately some banter had started in the changing rooms, and throughout the warm up there was banter flying around and everyone was ready for couple of games that didn’t mean anything but we could have a bit of fun while playing in.

The time had come and the first game was upon us it was against Braintree and we started off the game brilliantly and the first 10 minutes was a success we had kept position and was eating up the turf into braintree's half. It was all going great until a little lack of concentration led to us dropping the ball and braintree utilising the opportunity and scoring the first of many for them.Despite the try we remained optimistic and took the kick off and started building pressure in defence but another lack in confidence led to yet and chance for braintree and them being the good team that they are the grabbed it both hands and scored again.Braintree scored another 3 in the first half but just before the end of the half we builded pressure and other the course of a few penalties we found ourselves in Braintree’s half and mounting pressure and thanks to great game management from the backs we scored a brilliant try and went into the half time talks on a high.We came out into the second half knowing that we were going to have so score big but unfortunately for us Braintree scored another two tries and we scored no more unfortunately.

After a major defeat in our first game we had to have a few changes and this meant that we saw some of the player that were lent to us from Saffron Walden to add some strength and depth to our squad.

Our next game was against Ipswich YM who were playing player a year above everyone else.This put us on the backfoot from the start but because these games that we were playing and the fact that we had nothing to lose we were ready to play a hard match against them.The first few minutes saw YM score their first try and saw our team change and start to play a lot better due to some better game management from Tommy and Lewis who were playing 9 and 10 we were able to hold out Ipswitch from scoring and we forced them into a kick that fell straight to our full back and he was away, quick thinking saw several phases from the forwards before a well executed backs move saw us continue to gain ground.However, due to a misreading possession was handed back over to Ipswitch who were under pressure again but they had found a way through the blockade that was set up and they we away to score another.At the end of the first half we had a penalty in front of the posts and us score a brilliant drop goal to get some points on the board.The second half saw us lose the game completely as Ipswitch ran away with the game.

These games saw us develop as a team and see different players in different positions. However the biggest thing that we learnt out of these games was how to have fun and games, but also have to have a bit of banter with our mates after the game on the trip back home and an enjoyable trip to McDonalds.

Report by Tommy Bunker

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