Burton U16's v Walsall U16's

Burton U16’s were thin on the ground for forwards for a change, missing 6 regulars making the line out and ball carrying more of a challenge than it would normally be. It also mean't we only had 2 replacements, a fact that was to come into play towards the end of the game. Burton gifted the 1st try to Walsall with a bout of over enthusiasm trying to run the ball out of their own 22m, this was followed closely by another well worked try for Walsall. Burton had chances to score but the final pass wasn’t made, eventually after gaining some decent field position Burton got on the score sheet with a simple try and good hands for Steve. Walsall got the last try of the half to make it half time scores 17 v 5.
The 2nd half was hard work, Burton took a couple of injury’s and the defensive organisation went out the window, Walsall making plenty of player interchanges (a big squad) picked on this and started to spread the ball wide as often as possible several of these runs resulted in scores. Burton did trouble to score one more time with a good individual effort from Joe J. Final score 10 v 43.
Walsall worth the win playing to their strengthens. From a Burton perspective, with so many players playing out of position, scrum half’s jumping in the line out (both who did really well) and all the forwards playing a full 70 minutes, we couldn’t have expected too much different. We have the return fixture in January and this doubles as a league game as well, hopefully when we take what we have learned about how Walsall play, with some of our “missing in action” forwards back into harness we will be able to give a better account of ourselves in that game.