Happy Ending

After many years of attending Broughton Park's Happy Sunday Minis festival, we made our last visit on Sunday before our graduation to the Junior ranks. Broughton Park have always pitched this festival as 'rugby for rugby's sake' with all kids encouraged to get stuck into friendly local rivalries and just to enjoy their rugby.

At the coaches' briefing the organisers pointed out that local rivals often end up under the same roof in future years as teams fold due to lack of numbers. We were encouraged to see the bigger picture of player engagement and development. With those words ringing in our ears we set off to see what the day held in store for us.

Straight away everything changed as it became clear that Broughton Park's U12s couldn't field a team and we agreed to play 3 longer matches against Manchester, TMV and Sale.

Against Manchester a promising start quickly wilted in the face of some terrific Manchester play. Manchester have a couple of fantastic individual athletes but they also have terrific organisation and they stuck to their plans until they had us just where they wanted us. A strong second-half drive by Moor was repelled before Manchester finished us off with a series of well-worked team tries.

As the players trudged off wet and probably a bit demoralised it was natural to worry whether things might have gone a bit off the rails but what followed was remarkable. TMV and Sale needed a few players to keep them going and throughout the morning and so player after player volunteered to join our opponents and give their best for the good of the game.

Highlights included an all-action performance by Charlie S for Sale, a cracking try conjured between Caelan and Danny (and then Caelan again) against Manchester, a hat-trick for Joe against Heaton Moor and finally a real ding-dong against Sale where the score was officially registered as 'who knows'.

On a wet day that seemed to get bleaker as the morning went on, we turned up mob-handed and proceeded to represent Heaton Moor in the best possible way. I'm sure that all of our local rivals can't help but have noticed our talent, strength-in-depth and commitment to the true spirit of the game.

The featured photo this week has been doing the rounds on social media and is said to encapsulate the spirit of rugby (as one kid checks on an injured opponent). If it were not for the aquatic conditions on Sunday, we could easily have matched that photo 20 times as our kids huddled down with 'opposition clubs', were high-fived by adopted team-mates and generally gave their all to say the best possible farewell to the Happy Sundays Festival.

Thanks to our hosts and all the organisers at Broughton Park and our friendly rivals for a great morning's rugby.