U10 MINI RUGBY

Match Report - Havant Emerging Players Festival

Havant Emerging Players Festival was a new addition to our fixtures list - and well worth keeping in there if we can. It was well organised with some completely different teams to test ourselves against - mostly unknown quantities.

The U10s have a habit (or should I say had a habit) of starting slowly, losing their first match and making things hard work for themselves from thereon in. Not so on Sunday - first match against Salisbury, who were no pushover, the boys were quick out of the blocks and won 2-0, with tries from Spratty and Tait. Good solid play from the forwards, with our backs supporting well.

Next game was against Wimborne - time for the backs to do their thing, with some great link play from Miller, Dunster, Byworth and Gupta. Two opening tries from Byworth, followed by scores from Jackson & McKay, as well as good defence, sealed it at 4-0.

By far the toughest match was always going to be against Brighton, whose reputation for being well-organised, skillful and disciplined goes before them. We came across them at U8s, when they sported body armour for tag - two years later they've still got the armour and half of them seemed to have developed six-packs! We defended as best we could, but in the end conceded our first two tries of the day with no reply.

It's a confidence thing - having lost to Brighton, the boys' heads could have gone down but didn't and they responded really positively for the final game against Winchester. Having had pretty decent weather all morning, the heavens opened and this match was played in Murrayfield conditions. A delightful solo effort from Hornby, showing a turn of speed up the wing not seen in his family for generations, opened the scoring. Spratty then did the honours for our forwards, scoring twice. Our inter-changeable little generals - scrum halves Miller and McKeller - bossed well all tournament long and it fell to McKeller to score next. Byworth completed the score to seal the match with a 5-0 victory.

We were runners up in the group to Brighton and went straight into the Plate final against Alton, from the other pool group. The silverware was there for the taking and our team duly obliged. We were fairly comfortable winners in the end by 5 tries to 1. Scorers: Byworth, Jackson (3), Hornby.

Plenty of courage (credit to Stewart for playing with a severed thumb and Hall for surviving a bone-crunching blow to the nose) and skill shown throughout. Consistently dogged tackling from the all players, especially Norris and Tait, and a great team effort from all the players, means yet more silverware for the U10s this season. Well played!