U8 MINI RUGBY REPORTS

Effingham B Festival 16th March 2008 - Mud, Glorious Mud….

Effingham RFC decided to continue with their B festival despite the very water-logged pitches and generally wet conditions.

Match 1 Camberley

The squad got off to a flying (or at least squelching and sliding)  start  opening up a 3 – 0 lead by half time with a tries from Charlie Warr, Matthew Singleton and Nikolas Orlic. The second half also went Cobham’s way with Matthew adding two tries to complete his hat-trick and Thomas Munday  scoring one. Camberley eventually managed to salvage one try. The final result was a convincing  6 – 1 win to Cobham.

Match 2 Old Reedonians

The second match promised to be more challenging, the fingers were starting to get cold but the competition was warming up in the shape of Cobham’s old Rivals Reeds. Harry Fish opened the scoring in the first half  but Reeds soon fought back to take the lead. The teams then swapped blows with Thomas Munday Scoring two tries and Reeds replying with two more to take a narrow 4 – 3 lead at half time. The second half was equally hard fought. Good tagging attempts by both teams hampered by slippery tags and numb fingers. A new concept of frostbite (as opposed to blood) sub was introduced at this point! Reeds applied a lot of pressure to grind out two further tries. Cobham demonstrated some good free flowing play and passing which was rewarded  by Thomas completing a hat-trick and George Whalley scoring the final try for Cobham. At the end of an exiting close fought game the final score line was a narrow 6-5  loss for Cobham.

Match 3 Effingham

Another exciting match with Cobham taking a deserved 5 – 3 lead by half time with two tries each from Thomas and Charlie and one from Joseph Francis. Early in the second half  Effingham took some of the initiative back to score two tries . Thomas managed to get one back for Cobham and secure his second hat trick of the day. Ultimately a ‘difference of opinion’ between the Cobham touch judge (“it was out”…. twice)  and the Effingham referee (“I didn’t see it”)  paved the way for a final Effingham try and a  6 – 6 draw in a match that Cobham probably deserved to win.

(Note - Match 3 – Camberley, who were due to referee, had withdrawn from the tournament so Cobham refereed the first half and Effingham the second)

Due to Camberley’s withdrawal our result against them wasn’t counted and consequently we narrowly missed the cut for the semis. On the plus side it was home to a warm bath for the boys, on the minus the boys had put in a valiant effort in foul conditions and in the final (unbiased!) analysis their efforts warranted more of a reward.

A great job was done by all the coaches to keep the boys motivated and warm. A particular mention Paul Hammett for provisioning hot chocolates, hot dogs and hats and to Emma Fish who pitched up later in the morning with fleeces, towels and even a hot water bottle for finger warming!

Finally apologies for any inaccuracies as my notes, like everything else, were pretty soggy by the end of the day and as a result quite hard to interpret.