Exciting away draw for NB U12s

Chipping Sodbury provided a glorious sunny venue for the U12’s penultimate match of the season, played in perfect conditions. Despite conceding size to their larger opponents, NB’s never-say-die spirit earned them a well- deserved draw.

CS’ kick off to start the match, deep into the NB half, was securely fielded by James and safely cleared. CS’ larger players were battering away at the NB defence, but our lads stayed solid, and indeed managed to score the opening try of the match on 6 minutes, when Ollie H managed to barge over. The score came from a clever cross kick by James that was chased and gathered by Tom who recycled for James to feed Ollie H near the try line and he did the necessary to get over the line.
Minutes later, Alfie took a tap penalty to Luke who charged for the line, but was held up just short; the ball was fed back to Alfie who scooted over to put NB 2-0 up.
A lapse of concentration a minute later allowed CS in for their first try; 2-1 to NB which is how the first half ended.

The coaches rang the changes at half-time, and, before the new formation could settle in, CS had crossed over for two tries within the first two minutes of the second half; 3-2 to CS. Both tries were conceded as a consequence of some lazy tackling and, it was starting to look like CS would run away with the match. However, four minutes in, Alfie, ever alert, harried the CS defence into a slack pass near their own line and then pounced on the loose ball to scurry over to level the scores at 3-3.
Parity remained until the eigth minute, when CS’ giant centre barged his way over for two tries in quick succession lo make the score 5-3 to the home side. Indeed, a further try by the same player was disallowed due to him having led with his elbow when being bravely tackled by Tom.

NB were being outmuscled at this stage and the coaches reintroduced Luke, Ollie H and some of the more experienced players back into the fray. This paid dividends as, in the 14th minute, Luke robbed a CS defender on his own line and dropped over to pull one back for NB; 5-4 to CS. This raised the NB spirits and a minute later, Alfie poached a loose ball and crossed over for his hat trick and the equalising score after a great run by George, who sustained a nasty injury in the process; 5-all. NB were perhaps a tad lucky not to be pinged for a knock-on by George in the tackle, but were fully deserving of the score.

The last five minutes of the match saw few chances for either side and thus the match ended 5-5; probably a fair result on the balance of play. There were some great performances on the NB side with Tom, Luke, Alfie, Ollie S, Ollie H, Mike, George and James showing particularly well. Panashe made a couple of great catches and never shirked a tackle; unfortunately he was never allowed the space to get running. Ryan and Jamie continue to develop well and will have benefited tremendously from this latest run out.