U9's Fantastic at Foxbury

Our squad of Marshall, Oli R, Biodun, Ted, Fynn, Mark, Peter, Henry C, Jay and Ruben and the ever present parents and family all decended on the fantastic grounds of Eltham College for the Foxbury Festival. It was a wonderful day, firm under foot, bright and sunny and perfect for running rugby. Well for at least one half when you were not running up the north face of the Eiger!

We all agreed as coaches that our squad of players did very well considering that they had only been tackling for four weeks and were getting back into playing again. Not only that it was noticable that the children are starting to listen more, thinking about what they are being told and trying to implement it on the pitch.

There were no winners or losers in this festival and we were given a trophy for just turning up, which we decided would go to the best tackler of the day; more on that later. With that in mind we decided that rather than replace players throughout the match like last year we would give the players a half each and even it out over the festival. I think this afforded each player about the same amount of playing time and was as fair as possible.

I will not go through match by match except to say that we won two out of four. Fundamentally it comes down to te core skills of passing, running with the ball and support play. The tackling was good and everyone can be very proud of the bravery they showed when tackling their opponents, some of who were considerably bigger than them Ruben. Particular mention in this area must be made of Oli R, Peter, Marshall and Ruben who all tackled hard throughout the day. As Steve said at the half time talk i am sure the opponent felt it as we all heard the fair and technically correct tackle be made. Thankfully both players were fine and running around straight away, which is a testament to the three parts of the tackle, TofP, C2C and RofS. What was also very pleasing to see was the way the players are starting to not be selfish at the re-start and look to get the ball wider. However there is still the tendency to bunch, like flies / bees, lions / tigers and bears around a honey pot. I will get that saying right at some point this season and hope that my table cloth is a big as a rugby pitch by the end of the season! That said there was some super straight running from all of the players, and I literally mean all of the players to a boy and girl, and some super off loads and passing that at time was before the tackle, so well done there!

Colin and Chris have stressed from their coaching course the need for players to talk about what is going well and what needs improving. It was really nice to see our boys and girls thinking about the matches, the skills they used and answering up with some really good ideas and answers and trying to implement it on the pitch.

The unanimous decisions of the coaches that Peter won the tackler of the day award and took home the Foxbury Festival trophy for the week. What was also fabulous to see was how Mark conducted himself at the end of our last game. Mark showed great team and rugby spirit when after the match he went up to one of the Dartfordians players who hurt himself during the match and asked how he was. It was a lesson to us all and an act we should aspire to.

I am really looking forward to next week and wish the players all the best at the Bromley Festival and a good training session at BRFC for the remainder! Well done again!

Yours in Rugby

Jerry

In conclusion the players should all be very proud of the way they played and conducted themselves at Foxbury