Alnwick Come 2nd in Plate Final

Before you beat yourselves up over the game today, let’s first look at how far we have come since the start of the season. It has been an absolute pleasure to see all of you develop over the last 9 months, we have seen a marked improvement in both your skills and your attitude and you are really starting to pull together as a team. That is why it feels so disappointing to you to lose today, but I am sure if we had played Tynedale at the beginning of the season they would have beaten us 60 -0 and today we scored 2 converted tries against them and in the last 20 minutes you lifted your performance and fought to the very end. So be proud of what you have achieved this season and look now to enjoy your well-deserved tour in 2 weeks.

Tynedale fielded a well drilled team today and were very quick to organise their attacking backline at the breakdown and move the ball wide where they had some real pace on the wings. Our defensive organisation let us down and we were constantly behind the action struggling to cover ground to intercept their attacks, and as you all discovered – this is a difficult thing to do.
We failed to put their midfield under any real pressure for much of the game and this gave them freedom to play the game they wanted, but when tackles were made they were generally good and this is an area we are definitely improving in.
When we got clean ball in hand we made some good progress and there were some good periods of play with multiple phases with the forwards recycling the ball before releasing to the backs. Sometimes the ball was a little slow to make it to the centres, and that compounded with our attacking line being too flat meant we were put under immense pressure – often we panicked here a little and shipped the problem down the line when we really needed to run ‘black ball’ and reset and start again.

Ultimately it was a good day, you all looked very proud in your new kit and your parents quite rightly looked proud of you all throughout the day.