Boston V Southwell U13's NLD cup

It was a morning of firsts today as Boston U13s travelled to over Nottinghamshire to play at Southwell for the first time in their debut in the NLD Cup. It would also be their first game with a neutral NLD referee. The teams had actually met earlier this season in a closely fought contest at the PRSA in which Southwell had emerged with the spoils so the Boston players were keen to reverse that result today.

When we found we’d been assigned the lower pitch at Southwell it was clear that the match wouldn’t be the fast, open and flowing game favoured by our lads as it looked as though it had been prepared for the filming of a WW1 epic. The match started with Boston kicking downhill and within the first few minutes it looked as Boston would make the advantage tell as they worked towards the Southwell “Red Zone” by virtue of some fumbled balls by Southwell and a tackle which Sir had ruled as being high. The first seven minutes continued in this vein with Southwell penned down between their 22 and the halfway line but with Boston unable to make the territorial advantage count

Then on eight minutes Southwell managed to break the Boston line, worked the ball wide and released their left winger who we would soon know as Boston’s nemesis today and he ran in the first score: 5-0 Southwell. Another try quickly came via the same route on the 11 minutes before Angus Martin pulled one back on a typical mazy run which left the Southwell defence trailing in his wake. 12 minutes played and with both teams exchanging scores the crowd sensed that the game was very much on.

Unfortunately straight from the kick-off Southwell ran the ball back up to the Boston line released the left winger and he ran in his third try.

The game then reverted to type for the conditions with a lot of handling errors and scrums in and around the centre of the pitch. The Boston scrum was looking solid and despite the moments of brilliance from the Southwell winger it looked as though it would be a repeat of the tight
and tense game from earlier in the season. Sadly that wasn’t to be and in quick succession the Southwell wingers managed to run in two more before half-time which would end 25-5 to the home side.

The Boston team were keen to put the first half behind them and started the second well, but Southwell were able to use the downhill to their advantage and ran in three unanswered tries in the second half, with the match finishing 40-5.

Despite the result there were a lot of positives to take from the game: the scrum had been a particular area of strength and the handling across the team had been good despite the filthy conditions. There were also some great individual performances across the pitch. We’ll take those positives and areas to work on into training ahead of our next game in the NLD Competition in a few weeks’ time.

We’ll leave it to some comments from the Southwell Head Coach who was particularly complimentary about the effort and spirit of the Boston players: “Although the game didn’t go their way the boys played really well and behaved like gentleman in the face of the score. We have really enjoyed playing Boston and would welcome more development games going forward. Not all clubs are so nice to deal with.”

Boston U13s: Barker, Barnett, Copley, Holder, Lawman, Martin ©, Meeds, Millington, Mountain, Oversby, Pikett, Roe, Smaglinska, Taylor, Vickers, Westbrook

Report by Robert Lawman