Hitchin U14A 17 – 17 Ruislip U14
A lovely morning for rugby, not to cold and that right balance between soft and firm underfoot. We’ve played Ruislip once before and that was a close game (they thought it was a draw last year), and it was to be the same again this year.

Thanks to all those parents that brought spare kit and the Sam Whit/HBS combo worked really well. In fact I think it might have contributed to the performance. Tom and I were a little nervous that the boys may not have been quite up for it this morning, and were expecting a slow start. How wrong could we have been, they went out on the B of Bang, and didn’t let up against a pretty physical opposition. Physicality and competitive spirit – big tick in the box.

Two areas of development that we were looking for this week, first was ruck dominance second, was playing the patterns. Both ticks, the ruck in particular was excellent this week, we regularly had players over the ball and it made the 9’s life a lot easier. Was there clearer calling of forwards and backs ball, absolutely and we were getting some really good territory as a result. Jacob x2 definitely brought the physicality with JZN breaking off mauls and making a menace of himself at the breakdown, and Jacob S carrying hard and just an absolute nightmare to tackle (they were both possibles for player of the match, and Jacob S did get the coaches nomination today).

In the backs there wasn’t a whole lot of time, but despite that we still were getting the ball to the wings from time to time, and Thomas Matthews joining the line from 15 was one of the capabilities we’ve been looking for for a while, and he was definitely picking good lines.
We could definitely have had more tries in the game. Perhaps a little goal line fever and indiscipline at critical points is the lesson to be learnt, and we let ourselves down with some of the ref backchat which is always unhelpful in a game this close.

But back to the positives. The bench brought real value to the end of the game, especially the two new players Seb Down’s had a great Hitchin debut, and Andre definitely showed his potential. I’m looking forward to watching the VEO back and seeing the contribution both players made. We also made some difficult position changes in the second half, Orin moving back to 15 for a more physical 10/12/13 grouping, Jobhan playing on the flank, and we couldn’t quite find a way to get Alex back on the pitch when the Jacob’s were so dominant. All the players affected showed significant maturity, impressive stuff.

So in the end we ended up Jacob ZN (1T), and Seb G (1T, 1P, 1C), Thomas (1C). Player of the match though was Thomas that conversion kick from the touch line was superb, but that’s not all, he was excellent at full back, and in the centres.