Sunday 25th October

With half term upon us we were down to 7 players Harry W, Harry G, Evan, Rory, Jason, Charlie C & Luke.

We played two 20 min games against a Teignmouth who had a squad of around 12-15. Both matches followed exactly the same form!

1st Half great defence, great tackles, great shouting and organising the defensive line by Jason, Rory & Harry W. However on attack we kept doing some silly things, throwing ball away, knocking on, not going to ground and setting up, not supporting runners resulting in lots of turnovers and about 5 or 6 tries to nil for the opposition.

2nd Half, we sorted out our attack and all the tries we scored came from a good set up of the ball after a tackle or a good offload in the tackle followed by one or two passes out wide to score in the corner. Our star runners were Jason, Evan, Harry W & Rory all scoring some great tries.

1st game I think Teignmouth nudged it by about 1 try but that was a good result after being 4 or 5 nil down at half time. 2nd game I think we won by 3 or 4 tries.

Every player was man down at one point taking a hit for the team, but that’s going to happen with just 7.

Highlights for me were. Luke putting in a great tackle and making a great support run, almost scoring in the corner before getting, flattened by their largest player. Charlie C making some great tackles as the games progressed with 3 or 4 made in the second half of the final match and I only remember him straying offside once, this saw him awarded with coaches man of the match and best tackle of the day. Good solid all round play from the team and progress.

Parents, what can you do. Remind your boys that great tackling wins contact rugby and technique, low and hard always beats the big guy!

Dare I say it we think they have got defence and just need to build confidence in their tackling. Attacking needs work. We’ve taught offload and pop pas, and therefore that’s all they seem to be trying to do, usually when they are already tied up by two or three tacklers. They need to run some phases, take contact set the ball go again and support. We will work on this over the next few weeks.

Next Sunday we are home v Tavistock 1015 start. I will send a txt tonight. Neil and Warren will be there I’m watching a small match on Saturday at Twickenham and won’t be back until late Sunday

Thanks
Scott