Rochford U11s vs. Burnham U11s and U12s, 30th October 2011

Unfortunately, what Burnham hadn’t told us was that they had a combined Under 11s and 12s team and were still short of players. So four of the Under 11s stepped up to make up the numbers each playing half the match for Burnham against Rochford Under 12s. The boys threw themselves into the game but couldn’t stop the Under 12s juggernaut. Tyler Scott was particularly impressive playing as Burnham’s Number 8 despite never having played there before (under 11s play with only 5 in the scrum) and having only 30 seconds of instruction as to what the job was.

It was clear early on that Burnham, now with added Rochford Under 12s, were looking to make up for the 58-0 thrashing they had just received. The match was never going to be pretty and Burnham very early on decided on a tactic of “give it to the big lad”. The Burnham loose-head prop was at least a head and shoulders above even the tallest Rochford player and used this to his advantage making good ground and scoring regularly.

On one such attack the ball was stolen by Liam Baker only yards from the Rochford line and he sprinted the length of the pitch, shrugging off at least two tackles, to score our only try of the match. He then coolly slotted over the conversion. The only remaining event of note left in the half for Rochford was the crunching tackle made by Callum Hishon which saw him limp off after one of the larger Burnham lads had fallen on his ankle.

At half time, with the score 7-35, Rochford re-grouped and clearly decided that the first job for the second half was to “Stop The Prop”. What followed had to be seen to be believed. Devan Reid joined the side from the Under 12s in an attempt to even up the teams physically.

We had told the boys before the game to double up on the big lads if they couldn’t stop them on their own. Finally the penny dropped and they targeted the Burnham prop and repeatedly put him on his back. The tackling was relentless from Spencer Crowhurst, Brandon Smith, Christopher Hastings, Nicholas Campen, Liam Baker, Tyler Scott, James Berry, James Mowle, Ben Cannon and Christopher Martin. When they tried moving wide Jack Chandler and Corey Lazell were on hand to stop them.

Defending like that hadn’t been seen since the time of the Spartans and Rochford shut them down, leaving the second half a breath-taking no-score draw.

It was an impressive performance from the boys and shows what they are capable of even when faced with larger, stronger opposition. They can be very proud of themselves.