U9's at the Foxbury Festival

What a scorcher of a day not only for the weather but for the rugby too. After a lot of thought on, not only how to pick the squad, but who, were finally chosen to “wear the shirts with pride” and that they did . . .

Thomas Ward
Archie Shipley
Ewan Watson
Shay Wellman
Oliver Cross (Captin)
Liam Walker
Finley Tookey
Lorcan O’Byrne Nestor
Freddie Justice
Gabriel Carey
Ben Pickup
Charlie Stocks
Lenny Oseman (who showed up and supported
with his kit)

In the first game they played against Old Colfeians in an opening match which flowed end to end with three trys run in by Archie Shipley, but with some good work the Old Colfeians managed to sneak a draw.

After an hour down time we were back on playing against Dartfordians, this game was a very open running game with lots of hard tackling by both sides. With two great trys run in by Oliver Cross and Ewan Watson with great support play by Shay Wellman and Lorcan O’Byrne Nestor, we were still unable to smother the shear effort put into the game by the Dartfordians and the game ended in another draw, a fitting result for this very hard bruising game.

A well needed rest was deserved after that encounter. An hour later we faced the very physical side of Sevenoaks in the midday sun, this proved to be an even harder challenge for the boys, with some fantastic runs set up from the line outs by Thomas Ward but with all his strength and heart he could still not make it across the try line, but the whole team kept on trying, we took a lead for a short while only to be pegged back. After a few decisions went against us the game turned and we could not get the momentum back and went down to a 5 to 2 defeat to a very strong team.

After licking our wounds and installing some self confidence back into the boys we faced our arch rivals “Beccehamians”. On taking to the pitch some comments were made by some of our long standing members of the team, one of which was, “my how they’ve grown” this being the only one I could print! So the game started with replacement prop Lenny Oseman taking to the field for his first game after waiting patiently on the side, but only a few minutes into game a clash with another player meant Lenny made an early exit due to a split lip, on came blood replacement Liam Walker looking very tired but up for the job in yet another bruising game. In all the excitement of this game I can’t remember who scored first, us or them, but Archie Shipley run in with a great try. With only a few minutes left on the clock and 1-1 on the score board, this must win game was still in the balance, after a penalty restart a very fired up Ewan Watson called for the ball, with a lung busting run for the try line with too many of the Beccehamians players to count hanging off him he made it to within inches of the line with Oliver Cross backing him up which gave him the final push over the line only to have the ball ripped from his arms. In his valiant effort he sustained an injury to his leg and ended up being replaced by a hard working Freddie Justice. The hard fault game ended in a draw with a lot of tired looking players. The efforts put in from players Finley Tookey, Gabriel Carey, Ben Pickup and Charlie Stocks goes with out saying, they all did their shirt proud today.

On a day like today to stand there and watch the boys put in the effort they did makes me proud to be on the coaching team and to be a Dad of one of them. Finally a huge thanks to not only ALL the boys for playing such an amazing amount of great rugby but to all the parents for their continued support.

“WE WEAR OUR SHIRT WITH PRIDE”