H&B RFC U12s at the H&B Festival (9th October)

After a grey and drizzly start to the day, H&B players turned up in dribs and drabs as many other teams from further afield arrived early and set up their tents and began their drills before 10am. Even by the start of play (due in part to a few absences and illnesses), H&B only had 14 players to field. This one substitute proved to be the thinnest of cover as injuries and cramp took their toll; meaning that for most of the play we only had enough players to field a team on the pitch.

A difficult day to play rugby, which seemed to get warmer and warmer, and the home rugby seemed to get scrappier and scrappier. We started off with a tough fixture in a pool that contained no easy teams to play. Eastbourne used their much bigger size advantage to good effect; retaining ball and setting their own pace. Three phases of missed-tackle play gifted our neighbours a 3 - 0 victory.

In the second match, against a Warlingham team displaying the kind of passing play usually seen in higher-league rugby, H&B did well to contain the strong opposition until - once again - sloppy defence allowed the visitors to take the game. 6 - 0 end score.

The third game was against old foes and hot favourites for the title - East Grinstead. Memories of going to East Grinstead years ago and beating them in two out of three matches seemed dim and distant and the visitors displayed passing and tackling abilities that outstripped the home team. Better play in the second half did not stop EG from running out 4 - 0 winners.

In the final game, against an Uckfield team we were unlucky to lose against last week, tempers frayed and H&B lost control of the game; gifting Uckfield with easy penalties and plenty of gaps for them to run through. A disappointing 6 - 0 loss.

Difficult to draw out many positives from this home tournament; especially when there were so few opportunities to allow our strike runners a chance to threaten the opposition line. But the set-piece play wasn't all bad (plenty of good scrums against much bigger opposition), and there were some fine individual tackles from players. But too often, the H&B players allowed opposition teams to run at them without any decent attempt at a tackle. H&B were too slow at the ruck, and forgot to reform their lines into a defensive or attacking shape. It was a bad week for H&B, and there'll be a lot of work to do if we want to pick up the season by winning a few matches.

Player of the week went to Tom Hirst for the fine effort he put into all the matches; at the ruck, around the scrum and in the tackle.

Team was:

1. Max Holmes
2. Lee Hopkins
3. Chandler Buckingham
4. Owain Lusted
5. Stephen Beach
8. Freddie Simes
9. Tom Hirst
10. Ronnie Doorey-Palmer
11. Gabriel Balde / Ben Gateley
12. Tommy Russell
13. George Marvin
14. Ashley Hills
15. Stuart Chisholm.