Blackheath Festival
We had a great time at the Blackheath Festival with both squads winning all 5 of their games. The players played as two teams - the Reds and the Blues (also known as the 'Titans/The Justice League' - don't ask!)

Reds - Ronnie, Jaxson, William, Tom C, Noah BmcC, Zachary, James H, Jago, Thomas K
A great festival at Blackheath RFC for a new look team today. The boys all played with an excellent team spirit and good sportsmanship. They deserved their 5 wins from 5 games in some entertaining close encounters showing respect for the opposition and the referees. I received a number of comments from refs, coaches and opposition parents about our players and how well they played and conducted themselves.

Special mentions for defensive play and quick tagging go to Tom and Jago who applied pressure on the opposition every game. Noah ran the length of the field to score tries on a number of occasions and played some wonderful passes to team mates in space. William and Jaxson were great running off the ball supporting play and also scored some great tries. James and Ronnie both battled in the middle of the park and scored well worked tries. Special mention to Zachary for his 3 tries in quick succession against Blackheath which left the opposition dazed and confused after good defensive work creating the turnovers.

My man of the tournament goes to Thomas Karelis who led the defensive line and battled in every game willing his teammates on to victory and also scored some memorable tries. Fantastic performance! Things can get better, we have much to work on. Going forward we have so many options. We need to work on using the space and passing quickly into that space using the width of the pitch letting the ball do the work.Passing the ball quickly into space at the restart needs to be a focus for all our teams using every player on the team who is available for a pass. Make the right pass at the right time, attack the space. Too often we were running back into trouble when a simple pass could have set up a fresh attack from a new angle. Defensively we must continue to work on remaining in our defensive line and not dropping back inviting the other team forward.

Very proud of all the boys today who all played a part in a fantastic festival and 5 wins from 5 games. Thanks to coach John and all the parents for their fantastic touch line support and officiating.

Team Titan League of Justice – Bobby, Alfie, Christian, Max, Finn, Charles, Jet, River, Cameron
What a great day, we played as a team, had fun and won every match. The unofficial score card was –

•Sevenoaks 3 Old Whits 4
•Blackheath 5 Old Whits 6
•Aylesford 3 Old Whits 10
•Kings College Pirates 2 Old Whits 6
•Old Dunstonians 4 Old Whits 7

The team was great, played well together and had fun. Some of the highlights of the day - Max stealing the ball as the opposition were about to score and singlehandedly running the length of the pitch to score for us (he did this more than once). Alfie’s tagging - tagging 6 in a row, so we made the most of the 7 tag turnover rule (which is the first time we have played with this rule) and generally staying onside while tagging ;) Christian tagging and scoring in equal measures, always in the middle of the action. Charles was excellent at finding space and supporting play. He scored a couple of important tries when we were level and needed them. Jet’s passing was super accurate and got the ball into the spaces we found. River scored a couple of epic tries from nowhere, managing to get through their lines. Cameron scored tries from long runs and supported the team with good tagging and passing. Bobby ran well and scored a fair few tries, it was funny watching him almost pull someone’s shorts off from the Old Dunstonians - whose tags seemed to be “Stitched” rather than velcro’ed onto their shorts! Finn seemed to have got even faster, running through the opponents and passing as soon as he got tagged which meant the games didn’t slow down (this set us apart from the other teams so we will keep working on this in training.

As part of the next few weeks of training we will focus on spreading out (starting shape) so we have some better “set moves” and not huddling to close together as the starting whistle is blown and then work into this some more focus on supporting play and making use of the space now we are playing on bigger pitches.

•Man of the Match – Max Leadbitter for the epic line to line try.
•Team Manager – Mrs Leadbitter (for managing the substitutes for each half better than I could!)

Big thanks to all of the boys, parents and coaches for being on time, playing and supporting so well. A good time was had by all!