Fifteen boys (plus SIX subs) battle past Aylesbury

An awesome performance on the 3G pitch

Another week and another new challenge for the boys of Camelot Under 15's. This week's challenge came from a strong Aylesbury side that always make for tough opposition, a strong, blustery wind and an artificial pitch.

With the scheduled league game with Ealing postponed Aylesbury stepped in to provide the opposition in a game that was at times bruising and at times just downright unbelievable to watch. Despite the scoreline, Aylesbury enjoyed large periods of possession, but just could not find a way through a solid defence and in fact rarely threatened to get into the Camelot twenty-two. All that said, the Camelot performance left room for improvement, they will have been disappointed with the number of times the ball was turned over in the ruck, but the way they battled to win the ball back, forcing the home side into errors, meant the turnovers were not an issue...in this game.

The scoring started with a try from George following some superb defensive work and an exquisite kick from Caolan who found himself out on the wing for this encounter, a position he slipped into as brilliantly as he would any position on the pitch it seems. The Backs chased down the kick, forced the error in defence leaving a loose ball available for George to pick up and score with ease. In blustery conditions Dan's conversion crashed against the post and spun off wide.

That lead was soon doubled when a strong Camelot scrum won possession and opened the game up for the Backs to show their superior speed and ball handling to work the ball along the line for Caolan to score over the line. A tremendous team try. The conversion was missed. 10-0.

The next try again came from the scrum, despite rotating the frontline personnel and an artificial pitch underfoot, the Camelot pack consistently showed what an important factor they have become in giving Camelot the edge and allowing the Backs to do their stuff - Something they did in superb style with the width and flat running the pitch provided. For the third try it was a bit of a Dan and Caolan double act. Dan set off on the break, beat a couple of defenders before passing the ball out to Caiolan who fended off a couple more defenders before being taken to ground where Dan was waiting to pick the ball up and finish off the job.

15-0 down and Aylesbury did not know what had hit them...and neither did the home defender who was brave enough to try and stand in Thomas' way when he set out on a run intent omn gaining vital yards, bumping the defender to the ground he then spread the ball out to a team mate in the centre of the field. Whilst many in the ground were looking to see if the bumped defender was going to get up a grubber kick through towards the try line was superbly chased down by James Norman who scored in the corner.

Aylesbury refused to give up and continued to apply pressure and disrupting the rucks, but too often failed to capitalise on the possession with wayward passes or spilt balls that enabled Camelot to tighten the screw further. The fifth try came before the interval, again its all started with a powerful scrum that created the opportunity for Dan to break more than half the length of the pitch before needing the support of Freddie to take over the running and then finding Caolan out wide to power over the line for his second of the match. Dan completed the conversion to give Camelot a healthy 27-0 lead at the interval.

The second-half was a much tighter affair with Aylesbury enjoying even more of the possession, yet never once looking like scoring. Indeed it must have been soul-destroying after several minutes of possession, driving forward over the gainline, and then back again, to see the relative ease with which Terence dance stepped his way through at pace to create his own space and run in try number six. 32-0.

The match was effectively over as a contest and Camelot remained determined to maintain another clean sheet. The best way to do that was to attack and they started to do that more in the final minutes, applying huge amount of pressure on the Aylesbury twenty-two, but struggling to get beyond it...That was until Caolan seemed to decide that enough was enough, tuck the ball under his arm and power through a gap that didn't seem to exist to complete his hat-trick and finish off another formidable performance. Dan converted with relative ease to take the score up to 39-0, another eye-catching result.

FT: Aylesbury 0-39 Camelot
Tries: Caolan 3, George, Dan, James N, Terence
Cons: Dan 2