Braintree U 14's 58 - Basildon 5

With this fixture being organised at the last minute (and largely due to Dean Bennett at Basildon extending an invitation and doing a great job arranging ref, pitches and food so that the fixture could go ahead), we travelled down to Basildon with the squad looking forward to our first game of the year.

If the performance is a sign of the season to come, then this year is going to rock.

Our front row of Jordan Kelly, Freddie Reeve, James Abraham and replacement Tate Allington playing his first game for Tree were, frankly, amazing - with Freddie being the coaches choice for man of the match. To say this was the best performance in his time as a rugby player does not do Freddie enough credit - he won every contact, didn't miss a tackle, hit every ruck (and won them), and was beyond destructive at the scrum.

With his two props, and the aggressive second row play from Tom Wallis and Lewis Couttie, our tight five were simply fantastic.

With two new positions at 6 and 7 coming in this season, we thought we may struggle finding the right players for this position, but Dan Barron - captaining the side for the day, Isaac Hayes and Ollie Swandel all put in monster hits, and were massively disruptive to the opposition. Nick Smith at 8 was a one man wrecking machine today, always working to make a tackle, whilst carrying like the unit he is - considering we switched him from second row to 8 at the pitch side, this was a performance that was both unexpected, and very very pleasing to watch!

Onto our backs, Max Colebrook at 9 and new 10 Fin Sweet combined well a number of times to move the ball out to our centre pairing of Mac Singleton and George Wallbank, who made great use of the wingers of Jake Fookes, Nathan Thomson, and replacement Jimmi Clegg (who for one of our smallest players, made some great hits) - we will definitely be working on our attacking play in training, as when we went wide, we looked very very dangerous, and with Kaelin Dunne joining the line from 15, it was a real pleasure to watch.

Whilst the score is quite lop-sided, Basildon gave us a very good match and kept us under a lot of pressure in the final 15 mins, with only very good tackling in defence keeping them out (with some very interesting ref decisions going against us!).

Tries:
Nick Smith x 2, George Wallbank, Nathan Lewis x 2, Lewis Couttie, Kaelin Dunne, Mac Singelton, Nathan Lewis, Isaac Hayes,
Cons:
Jake Fookes x 1
Kaelin Dunne x 3