Sunday saw our first outings for the U7’s at festivals with part of the squad at Kings, and Mike and I down at Stoke Park in Guildford on a lovely October morning.

It was a bit of a learning curve being our first festival but overall the most challenging piece appears to have been putting up the tent!!

The squad for the day consisted of Alex, Olivia, Ralph, Sachin, Louis, Elliot and Henry.

The players acquitted themselves very well and operated superbly as a team both in attack and defence. There was a great contribution from everyone (other teams do seem to rely heavily on one or two players). We scored a number of memorable tries with several that included most, if not all, of the team with great passing, support and finishing. Olivia, Ralf, Sachin, Elliot and Henry all scoring a number of tries each, but with great involvement from Alex and Louis, both having superb runs contributing to several of the scores. Defence was excellent throughout with everyone tagging with huge enthusiasm. This was reflected in the score lines with all the games being very close and none of the opposition really getting away from us.

The overall result from 4 games was a win in our first ever festival game, 2 narrow losses and then a draw against the strongest squad at the Festival, Winchester. A game we lead and dominated throughout and only drew because of a superb, last minute solo try from Winchesters strongest player. So overall an excellent result for our first festival.

Many thanks to the parents for their support on the day, very much appreciated and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

From the Coaches point of view the day was a great success. The team enjoying themselves, and very pleasing for us, really playing and working together as a team and producing some of the best rugby of the day - showing many of the all-round skills we have been working on in training.

Well done to everyone and look forward to seeing you next week at our home Festival, and building on a great start to the season!!

Regards,
Mark Turrell & Mike Upward