Orkney v Muntly

Annual Orkney trip!

Saturday the 10th September was the date for the annual trip to Kirkwall.
Leaving dinner time Saturday, the boys and their coaches arrived in Kirkwall around eight in the evening after a slightly windy crossing. Plan was to get some food and then an early night in preparation for the game on Sunday. Early night being somewhere between 1am and 4am!!!

The game kicked off on Sunday at 1130 in near perfect conditions. Almost straight away the larger Orkney lads made their size count. Muntly were down three tries before they had had a chance to get their hands on the ball. As in the previous game the Muntly lads slowly worked their way back into the game with some adventurous play from deep inside their own half. Unfortunately, the lads didn't get into their rhythm and some poor support play allowed Orkney to turn over ball and mount further attacks. A further score by Orkney seemed to dent the visitor's confidence for a while. The U16s managed to hold Orkney at bay for a good while before Orkney scored their 5th try of the game.
Muntly decided that now was a good time to swing into action. Determined to get some reward from their efforts, the boys started to run hard with the ball, straight into the heart of the host's defence. The ball was carried several times into the Orcadian 22. When Muntly were awarded a penalty, van west was the first to react and took a quick tap, drew two players and fed Cotton who beat his man on the outside and managed to squeeze into the corner.
The next try was arguably the try of the day and was scored by Muntly. After several barnstorming runs by the Muntly pack, the ball was fed at speed to the left wing, where Murray showed his opposite number a clean pair of heels to score in the corner. Van west successfully converted from a tight angle.
Half Time 29-12

The second half was never going to be easy as Muntly were playing into a stiff breeze. Also, sportingly, the Muntly lads agreed that Orkney could use all their squad in this game (30 odd players) as they hadn't yet had any meaningful games. This allowed Orkney to keep putting on fresh legs as the game wore on. The Muntly lads held out for a good while but eventually, fatigue, allowed Orkney to run in a number of tries. Somehow, near the end of 80 mins of hard graft, the Muntly lads found the energy to start attacking the Orkney lines. From a breakdown just in the Orkney half, Bruce Burgoyne received the ball in a bit of space and set off in a mazy run that resulted in him beating a number of players to provide a delightful pop pass to his support player to score the last try of the game. Parkin put over the conversion to complete the scoring.
Final score 50-19.

Squad: Paul van West (capt), Charlie Burgoyne, Lee Innes, Daniel Cotton, Ruaraidh Murray, Alex MacDonald, Calum Parkin, Bruce Burgoyne, Fergus Nicol, Alex Logie, Ewan Casburn, Adam Christie, StJohn Lockey, Jack Calam, Kashie Hanna, Jake Devlin, Nick Anderson