U12s at Lewes Festival 6 April 2014

MATCH REPORT REISSUED BY MIN BEVACQUA ON 6 JULY 2014 AS IT CONTAINED SOME SERIOUS ERRORS WHEN FIRST UPLOADED. MIN EXTENDS HER SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR ANY DISTRESS CAUSED BY HER ACTIONS.

We had 4 group games which would be followed by a play off if we finished in the top 4 in the group.

We started against the West Sussex festival winners and just did not get on the pace at all. It seems that we were all waiting for somebody else to do something and we lost by 3 tries to nil having played some very timid rugby.

The second game was against East Grinstead. There were improvements, but again we were second best over the park and lost this game too.

The festival, although very well arranged, had a format which gave us long periods of inactivity between games and it didn't bode well for our third game against Worthing as we had over an hour and 20 minutes to wait.

So what happened?

I don't really know, but we just started this game at 100MPH and blew Worthing away. The forwards were immense with great ball carrying runs from Joules at hooker and Ellyn at prop setting the rhythm for the game. An experiment to put forwards in at centre really gave us some go forward and Charlie on the wing had a huge game. We ran in 5 tries to 1 and the tide was changing ...

Last game was against the hosts Lewes and although we rotated to give other players game time the team just kept going at 100MPH and we again played some great power rugby with the forwards just smashing into the Lewes defence. Again we ran in easy winners.

So, we expected to have an early release to go home, but as luck would have it we had made the 3rd/4th play off against our friends from Worthing.

This was a concern to me as all of the team had switched off, some had taken off boots, a couple had gone home, so to get them back up for a final was going to be fun!

As in turned out I needn't have worried as we just went for it again. Joules playing at hooker made some great Big Ollie type runs away from the ruck and this again set the team onto a convincing win. Felix playing at centre scored a great break away try from an interception and from that point on we just built the pressure and ran in 4 tries. The sight of Big Ollie picking up and going on the blindside of a ruck right along the try line and scoring from 50 yards and making several supporters jump out of the way was quite something to see.

The team was playing with full commitment which was illustrated by Charlie smashing a Worthing player who caught a ball on the line who turned out to be a substitute and the ball had gone out ...

So what started as a bit of a grim day was in fact a really good day's rugby.

Thanks to all the players and of course the parents who came down to Lewes and gave their time to support the squad, it is really appreciated.