Braintree 'A' vs. Rochford U11s

This game showed why the Braintree A team is up there as one of the better teams in Essex. We spent the entire first half in on our half, mainly camped on our own try line. Again our line out was strong which got us out of trouble on a number of occasions. I guess its credit to Owen Jones in his accuracy and our forwards for competing in this area of play. The problem was even when we won the line outs, we just couldn’t get ourselves into an attacking position. As soon as we tried to break away, Braintree kept turning us over as we hung on to the ball just too long. It was only a matter of time before Braintree scored. I guess the only positive we can take out of the half was our defence was strong enough to only leak the one try.

The second half saw better play from Rochford as we at least began moving the ball around. Matt Dobson was close to scoring after a good passage of play which involved Tom Child and Michael Shields. However, he ended up isolated as the support was not there quickly enough.

Braintree then managed to clear their line from the scrum with a kick that was drilled the length of the pitch. It would have gone into the dead zone but for a lucky bounce, which put it into touch right back on our own try line.

Again, we fought back but Braintree gave our lads a lesson in off loading the ball into the tackle and support play. It meant our better tacklers were committed to the tackle while the attacker just offloaded the ball to the support players. They got their second try which was well deserved and after the conversion the game was over. Rochford shouldn’t be so down hearted though. When you have such a large squad of players to choose from there is always going to be an advantage both on the pitch and in training.

So perhaps not the result we would have wanted today but I felt all the boys were committed to the game today. It was also good to see that even when they were on the back foot against Braintree, not one boy had their head down. For one reason or another we haven’t had many games this season. The play was improved from last week. We still have a lot of rugby to play this season, so there is an opportunity to pick the pace up before the end of the season.