Kingswood U8s do the double over St Marys

With the sun shining and soft ground underfoot, the Kingswood U8s made ready to face St Marys. The previous fixture had been won convincingly by the Knights, so expectations were high that Kingswood could put in a good performance to pull off the double.

With St Marys bringing only 9 players (and Kingswood having 19) it was agreed that Kingswood would split into two teams, each one playing the single St Marys team once.

Game 1

Kingswood – Fraser Cox, Jacob Gerrard, Sam Press, Mason Howells, Caspian Broome, Charlie Cooke, Felicity Nicol, Joshua Pharo, Joseph Sheridan

The game started badly for Kingswood, a forward pass after some good running from Fraser Cox gifted St Marys the ball, who promptly ran the length of the field to score. The knights gathered themselves and quickly struck back with Charlie Cooke taking the final pass and diving into the corner following some great passing. That was as good as it got though for the next 5 minutes, as St Marys scored three quick tries. Kingswood were hibernating and hadn’t got to grips with the pace shown by a couple of the opposition players, allowing them to run at will out wide whilst the Kingswood defence was bunched together.

As everyone knows, hibernation comes to an end with the spring and as the temperature improved, so did Kingswood. It started in defence. Kingswood spread out across the field and began applying pressure, denying the opposition space to run and forcing them into making mistakes. One particularly brutal phase saw Joseph Sheridan, Mason Howells and Joshua Pharo combine to take three tags in succession, forcing St Mary’s back 10 meters and eventually throwing a forward pass. This provided a platform for the Knights to apply their own brand of rugby. Jacob Gerrard took the free pass, running into space and offloading to Sam Press who neatly wrong-footed the defenders and sprinted free to score.

The two teams traded tries before the half-time whistle went and although Kingswood were 4-5 down, it was clear that Kingswood had the edge.

During the second half, Kingswood used strength to their advantage. Caspian Broome and Jacob Gerrard were used from free passes as human battering rams, forcing holes in the defence through which the Knights’ supporting players poured through. Felicity Nicol in particular showed the boys how to do it, timing her supporting runs perfectly to not only gain ground but also opening up additional space for others to make use of. It is a recurring theme for this team, but once again almost every player ran in a try, displaying the willingness of every player to get involved and help their team.

With the clock ticking down, Kingswood found themselves 1 try up, but deep in their own half and defending hard. Yet just as it looked as though St Mary’s would score, the ball was dropped and the first to react was Caspian Broome. Collecting the ball, he brushed aside two attempts to take his tags and sprinted up past half way. Whilst he didn’t have the legs to outpace one of the St Mary’s players, he did have awareness to look for support. As usual, it was there, this time in the form of Charlie Cooke. A floated pass found Charlie and the rest, as they say, is history.

Final Score – Kingswood 11 v 9 St Marys

Game 2

Kingswood – Willem Artus, Liam Hibbs, Liam Jones, Oliver Gabriel, Kira Brown, Adam Surridge, Callum Ball, Jacob McConville, Libby Galloway. Vinnie Bush

The second game looked close right from the beginning. Both teams were displaying some lovely phases of play, with great handling skills and supporting play.

Once again, Kingswood displayed some ferocious defending, led from the front by Libby Galloway (AKA ‘The Tag Hunter’). The last time these two teams had met, Libby had made one of the opposition players cry, so they knew fear when she walked onto the pitch. As with the first match, St Marys found themselves running backwards almost as often as they were running forward, often leading to forward passes or players being forced to run off of the pitch.

With Kingswood defending like champs and generating turnovers, they had a great opportunity to punish the opposition in attack. Some great passing provided Oliver Gabriel with the ball, who decided to stop and check that both his tags were still in place after running between two defenders. Satisfied that they were both on and urged on by the crowd, Oliver made it to the try line to score Kingswood’s first points of the game (This little incident was repeated later in the match and prompted an impromptu lesson from the coaches at half time regarding ‘playing to the whistle’).

Where Oliver could go, other’s followed. Jacob McConville and Callum Ball were proving to be a handful, the pair combining a number of times to score tries. On one occasion, Jacob threw a diving pass a good 5 meters to Callum who managed to collect it with the tips of his fingers in acres of space.

Not to be outdone, Kira Brown, Adam Surridge and Liam Hibbs gained plenty of ground for the Knights with some straight running and lovely offloads, whilst Vinnie Bush and Liam Jones kept the score line ticking over with some great footwork

With the exception of a brief period straight after the beginning of the second half, Kingswood held the lead throughout (and wouldn’t even have fallen behind briefly were it not for a trip on Willem Artus just short of the line), and thoroughly deserved the win that came with the final whistle.

Final Score – Kingswood 14 v 11 St Marys

Player of the match went to Libby Galloway and Felicity Nicol, both of whom displayed a wonderful all round game. Both players turned up all over the pitch and never stopped running from start to finish.