It was a blustery morning on the exposed Chippy pitches and from a spectators point of view a long wait as the U 18’s England rugby coach entertained both teams with an extended pre-match training. The game eventually kicked off at around 11.20. The teams were evenly matched but Banbury appeared overall more organised which ultimately gave them the edge to go on and win the match. The scrum worked well to win back ball for the backs and Jamie worked particularly hard in the loose situations. The backs maintained their line encouraged by Charlie at fly-half (and Jon, coach/dad!). On the few occasions Chippy made a break for the line Banbury defended well with two notable tackles from Harvey and George. The score remained nil-all until the dying moments when Sam Lowe at scrum half made a break through to score.

Both sides enjoyed the contest and all (including spectators) were looking forward to a second game. As it was, Chippy preferred to mix things up a bit and in the second game the backs and forwards swapped positions and with both teams all playing out of position the whole thing turned into a bit of a muddle! This was followed by another game where they played the wrong way across the width of the pitch. There were no scores reported in these games. Perhaps with hindsight more value may have gained by having a second conventional game when Chippy would have no doubt come back harder and pushed Banbury hard for the victory.

Match Report – “Hold the Front Page” Lowe