Thames vs. Rochford U8s, 7 February 2010

Rochford U8s had a shaky start but Fraser scooped up a loose ball and commenced a powerful diagonal run. Support from Ricardo led to him opening the scoring with the first try of the match. Thames restarted but were immediately tagged by Haydn. Further Rochford pressure led to a turnover ball. Matt started a move with long looping pass to Ricardo who popped one to Fraser, a short right pass back to Jamie allowed to gain some ground down the right hand touch line before slipping one back inside to Matthew who powered over for a try. This was an excellent demonstration of passing and running that would not be out of place in the six nations.

Thames restarted but a forward pass gave possession to Rochford. Matthew gave a short left pass to Kian who launched into an impressive run through the centre ground but was held up and eventually a Rochford pass was intercepted. With a long run, the length of the pitch, Thames scored their first try. Rochford restarted but within seconds the same mistake happened again, another interception and Thames were now level. We were throwing away a great start. To win this match we were going to have to do better.

Henry got the ball and worked well with support from Ricardo who then scored. Then, when Thames restarted, good tags from Henry, Jamie and Matthew kept them out and eventually possession was regained by the visitors. Ricardo received the ball in the centre of the pitch and headed for the right hand wing, support from Fraser was rewarded with a nice switchback pass from Ricardo which he converted into a try. What a fantastic move! This was more like it.

Steve’s half time pep talk centered around keeping the passing tight to prevent the unnecessary tries given away from interceptions.
Another move was started by Ricardo and Fraser who was stopped by an important tag from Ben , playing for the opposition. Thames managed to then gain possession and found a large gap left by Rochford to make the score line 4-3.

Henry responded to this with a zig zagging run with a final shimmy to extend the lead. Thames managed to pull another one back before Kian followed up with another great individual try.

Rochford knew they couldn’t throw away the lead again so strong defence was the order of the day which came from Kian and Henry with some excellent tags but still the Thames side managed to overcome and pull one back.

One final throw of the dice saw Haydn make a run up the middle before being tagged, a pop up for Fraser sent him on a cross field run where he finally supplied a short left to Ricardo who was rewarded for his support with the final try of the game.

Lessons learnt: Sloppy passing leads to interceptions which invariably lead to tries for the opposition. Good passing and running leads to some excellent moves that develop themselves and will ultimately lead to tries. Despite the odd slip up some great rugby was played today and was a pleasure to watch.