Festival report by Richard Mardon:
On a beautiful day at the Wimbledon B Festival last Sunday, the Under 9’s B team produced an almost faultless display with their only defeat in four matches falling to the eventual winners, Guildfordians, who were by far the strongest team in the two pools, totalling 9 teams.

Often our competitive teams at festivals take a game or two to get into the swing of things but this time we could afford the opposition no such luxury. Our opening match first up at 10am was against the formidable Rosslyn Park. However, the coaches’ early nervousness was soon replaced with pride as the boys played superbly taking the lead half way through the first half with a fantastic solo effort from Isaac. Rosslyn Park dominated the possession but could not break through the defence of Wimbledon – led as always, by some ferocious tackling from Magnus. Rosslyn Park really did not come close to scoring until the last play of the game where, playing down the hill against a tiring Wimbledon, they scrambled a score in the far corner of the field to tie the match 1-1. As it transpired later on, this last gasp try robbed Wimbledon of our chances to go through to the plate.

The second match was against Guildfordians, who were clearly more physical, several pounds heavier and inches taller – what do they feed these kids just a short hop down the A3? Despite continuing the great defence and good rucking and mauling typified by the first match the organisation and physicality of Guildfordians wore us down and we lost 3-0.

So with one draw and one defeat the prospects for Wimbledon were not looking good and it could have been very easy for the squad of 13 players to let their heads drop and become disconsolate. However, that was not to be the case and, by producing the best performance of the day, went on to thrash Kings 3-0 in the third pool match. A result that was surely most pleasing for Kings’ pupils, Freddie, Elliott and Hugh – who definitely raised their games against their own class mates. Isaac got onto the score sheet once again and Magnus broke through a crowd of Kings’ players to score a brilliant and gutsy single handed effort. The boys had much more possession in this match and were running with much more fluency typified by the third try which was a classic running move through the backs with Isaac putting Billy through for his debut try.

So it came to the last match of the pool and the statisticians were frantically working out the permutations. Clement beat the coaches to the mathematical conclusion that we needed to win against Old Reigatians by a margin of three tries to nil to go through on a “tries scored countback” with Rosslyn Park. In the previous match Rosslyn Park had thrashed Old Reigatians 5-0 but unfortunately either Old Reigatians had galvanised themselves following three straight defeats or we were running out of gas, because Wimbledon were only able to muster a 2-0 victory – falling one try short of our target. Isaac scored again (3 tries in four matches!) and Harvey (“the try harvester”), who had moved into the centre from the wing picked up the second but the elusive third try was not to materialise.

In the end we were joint second in the pool and Rosslyn Park went through on the basis that they scored 8 tries in the pool against our 7 – desperately close. Rosslyn Park went onto lose the plate final 2-1 to Cobham (what could have been?) and Guildfordians beat Richmond 2-0 in the main final. There really was not much to choose between Cobham, Rosslyn Park, Richmond and Wimbledon and that is an impressive benchmark to have.

The whole squad produced impressive team performances, and over and above those citations above we had some great scrummaging from Freddie (the ball ripper) and Milton in the forwards. Clement also deserves a mention for his tackling and rucking. Elliott and Sachin interchanged superbly at scrum half and tackled well. Hugh is clearly a good fly half in the making and ran, tackled and passed well. On the wings, Sean, Jeremy and Josh shared the positions and put some good runs together and held the defensive line/shape well.
The boys were a pleasure to coach and there was no grumbling at all when the results did not go our way and when they were not able to play in every match.

Thanks to Steve for superb admin as always, Fabrice, Charlie and David for being pitch marshalls and Fiona/Gayle for helping out with the barbecue/donuts.

Richard, Joel, Greg and Saul