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Match Report |
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The long awaited and twice re-arranged tournament finally went ahead yesterday at a Manchester rugby ground.
Unity College have never before qualified for the event beyond the first round and looking at the teams involved I was quite apprehensive about the difficulty.
Upon arriving however, we noticed that, despite a couple of key players missing from the squad through injury, we looked like we could compete.
It all started very well against Poynton High School who had some large powerful players. D. Yates driving over the try line to put us ahead 5 - 0. Unfortunately we couldn't get as much possession as we would have liked to maintain pressure, losing the ball in rucks and tackles and allowing the opposition in to score twice which left the final score at 5 - 10.
West Lakes Academy took advantage of our backs getting sucked into the contact areas. Putting three tries past us. Again D. Yates replied for Unity College and was ferocious in the tackle, often tackling one player and getting up and tackling the next player as well! Exemplary from the hard working back.
The third and final game of the group stage was by far our worst performance. Against very weak opposition we allowed them too much possession and again were sucked into the rucks, leaving no defence when they passed the ball out. Joe Bennett, another eager and confident tackler did go over the line but inexplicably the try was disallowed! A lack of consistency in training was exposed and we fell to a third consecutive defeat.
With 3 losses, A. Ludlum having split his lip, C. Davidson having taken a knock to the noggin we could have been down and out going into our last game. However the Unity College boys are resillient if nothing else and proved that if not tactically aware we would keep our heads held high and try our hardest until the final whistle. Our last game saw D. Yates score twice and then we soaked up some pressure from our opponents with B. Allman-Cook refusing to give ground in any tackle, even when confronted by a player 3 times his size, he took him down (and surprisingly, after having said player fall directly on top of him, got straight back up!).
Winning our last game after such a dissapointing group stage was a good way to end things however all players need to attend training sessions more regularly to learn to play together and to improve results. Yesterday saw P. Brindley step up a year group and aquit himself honourably as several players made themselves ineligible through lack of attendance at Tuesday training.
Burnley Rugby Club will be taking training this Tuesday and I would also like to remind players that they are welcome to attend the after school sessions that now take place on the astroturf from 6 - 7.30pm on Wednesdays. We had a few players there last week so the more the merrier!
Next game will be year 8 vs Corpus Christie (Away) this Tuesday, training will take place on Monday for the year 7 and 8 squads.
Mr Williams