Weary Wolves

It was a much improved Sunday morning at Portway for the Under 8's this week, and not only because the weather was pleasant. The team all seemed up for the match against a Wolverhampton team that had tested us hard at their place earlier this season. Wolves could only field 7 players this week so they had to all play the majority of all three games, with one rolling sub, whereas we had a full dozen so had one team of 6 playing and one training with Will, but full credit to the Wolverhampton players, they kept going right on to the end of the morning.

Game one started with emphasis on the defence after last week, with instructions to stay as a line and to get in the way of the attack, not to let them just run straight through, like last week, and the boys took this on board, defending well and scoring tries seemingly at will when we had the ball, with some long mazy runs by Doug and good handling by everybody else, something that has improved lately. But Wolverhampton showed some nice running and passing of their own, scoring some nice long range team tries themselves. A 10-6 home win at the end of 10 minutes, 1-0 Bees.

Whilst game one was being played, our second six were practising 2 v 1's with Will, and this was evident in their match, with some excellent support lines off the ball carrier leading to some good tries. They had also listened to the defence talk before game one, with periods of defence where they were taking 8,9 or even 10 tags before Wolverhampton scored, unfortunately they don't play the 7 tag turnover rule that every other team follow and so were still able to score, generally when our boys questioned me about the fact they had taken 7 tags. A 7-8 away win in this one, 1-1 for games.

The Wolverhampton coaches and players were up for a third game, and because we had the two teams were happy for us to change our full team at half time. Game three was very similar to game one, they started this game with the intensity they showed in the first two games, but started to fade towards the end, and so the first half was tit for tat, free scoring by both teams. Our ability to bring on fresh legs in the second half was the deciding factor though and we ran away with it in the last couple of minutes. Final score 2-1 to us after this match.

Moment of the day has to go to Kaiden for his outrageous dummy that everybody, players, parents and even ref (ahem) bought.

Massive credit to everybody who made the trip from Wolverhampton, one of the nicest sets of coaches, parents and players we have had the pleasure of playing this season.