Hard fought win for U14s

Consett U14s welcomed Chester-le-Street to Belle Vue on a windswept morning for a game that was due to be played away but changed to a home fixture due to the pitches at Chester being unplayable.

We were missing players again due to half term and injury but we had another two players makings their debuts for the team in Michael Justice and Tommy Tennant. As with last week’s fixture we played 13 aside due to Chester only having 13 players available, with the flankers being dropped this time. We lined up 1.Conall Ruddick 2.Joe Hull 3.Ciaran Horgan 4.Scott Redshaw 5.Alexander Jackson 8.Christy Wood 9.Nathan Williamson 10.Keiran Dover (c) 11.Luke Clarke 12.Bradley Smith 13.Alex Goldsmith 14. Michael Justice 15 Mati Gorski with Tommy being the replacement.

Due to the weather conditions, we decided to try and keep the ball in the forwards as much as possible whilst Chester were happy to get the ball out to their pacey backs when in possession. From the kick off the game was end to end and I must admit that I was that engrossed in the game that the nature of the trys have escaped me now (although that could just be old age!!). Chester got the first try of the game before Consett hit back with two of their own to take the lead 10-5. The game swung in Chester's favour again with another two trys before Consett got themselves back in to contention with a try just before half time, with the difference in the score being Chester making one of their conversions to go into the break 17-15 ahead.

Consett were confident of pushing on in the second half due to having the wind advantage and the confidence was well placed with them getting a further three trys in the second half to Chester's one, with Dover also getting a conversion to make the score 32-22 to Consett. It must be said that both kickers did extremely well with the conversion attempts in the windy conditions.

Our trys came from Christy with three, Joe getting two and Brad chipping in with one. The game was played in a really good spirit again with both sides playing their part in an entertaining match. All of the lads played their part again in this win but we decided that man of the match should go to Scott this week. Scott has only been playing rugby at this level for a few months and is improving every week, he took responsibility of the ball at the breakdown really well today and the way he was picking and going was a great addition to his game. Well done to all of the lads, keep up the hard work.