Bath battle the cold rain to take on Old Bristolians and Walcot

Despite being a cold, wet and damp morning the warm up session and skills training with Walcot and Old Bristolians, the visiting teams, it was evident that spirits were high and all the boys were ready to play rugby.

Bath Tigers
The first match for the Tigers was against Walcot. Enthusiasm was high, but Walcot were quick off the mark and the Tigers were slow to respond and were soon down by two tries. Collectively they pulled together and played hard to bring themselves back into contention tagging as Walcot went into the attack, winning a turnover from a knock on and then scoring a number of tries to eventually level the match.

The next two matches were against the two teams from Old Bristolians. As with the first match Bath Tigers were slow out of the blocks and conceded a number of tries before turning the game. Attacking from the restart, Bath Tigers scored a number of times. In defence there was good supporting play to tag and put pressure on the attack. The end result was a mistake by Old Bristolians. Will was quick to pick up the ball and was soon running hard down the pitch, much like Chris Ashton against Australia. Not one to make it easy and run straight for the line, Will P side-stepped in to swerve passing two defenders before scoring. Both Benjy and Thomas came off the bench to score tries following good support play from all the team. The end result another draw

For the final match two new players joined in for the first time and both were soon in the thick of it. The slow start in the first match was reversed and the Tigers were quick to take the initiative and score the first try of the match. Further tries followed from both sides, with the scores level in the final minute. Old Bristolians scored and the pressure was on. Bath responded, with the ball going from one side of the pitch to the other before a number of passes ended up with Charlie (S) scoring in the corner to take the win.

Bath Lions
The Lions played 3 matches on Sunday winning 2 and just losing the other 8 - 7 against a strong running Old Bristolians team. They scored 19 tries altogether from some good passing and support play. Some strong running from Xavi, Cameron and Tristan and the now familiar snakey hips from Josh! Finn scored a couple of lovely tries when he really stretched his legs! Tagging was generally good, but we lost concentration a few times and missed some tags we should have been making, we need to work on our alignment in defence. Altogether a really encouraging morning for the boys, and in very chilly conditions with some very chilly hands, well done to all!

We now look forward to a great tag festival next Sunday and the chance to watch Bath vs Saracens.