It was a mixture of training and games at home for the Minis this weekend with most of the Junior sides playing away, the AGP also had its first official use by the Under 16s and Colts.
The Under7s were on Mascot Duty on Saturday for the 1st Team providing the Guard of Honour and enjoying a half time game on the New AGP. Sunday saw the Under 7s training at Tulketh with Alfie Townsend earning the well deserved title of ‘Player of The Week’.
The Under 11s hosted a very well organised outfit from Rochdale, a team that we have faced on a number of occaisions in various tournaments and festivals. We managed to field three different hoppers teams, playing five games amongst them. Throughout the morning there was some superb rugby played, some great competition for the ball, with fiercely competitive rucking from both teams. At times there were some excellent passages of running rugby, especially when the boys remembered that passing the ball sometimes helps their cause. All in all a great mornings rugby, ending with two wins, two losses and a draw. All boys left the field of play happy with their mornings work.
The Under 14s had a convincing 37*-7 win away at Fylde. Hoppers played some extremely high quality “total rugby” with many stand out performances, overall a great team effort!!
The Under 16s lost 33-10 to Sandbach on their first outing on the AGP. Despite having good possesion and territory, Hoppers were let down by weak tackling and lack of precision in the Sandbach 22. It was a better performance than the score suggests though.
The Colts were bolstered by an influx of new players for a friendly on the AGP against Sedgley Park, the Colts running out winners 34-20. The Sedgley pack were bigger than the Colts but the Colts back-line had plenty of pace in it. Despite conceeding a score early on, the Colts hit back with 2 trys and then never looked back playing some great open running rugby. A purple patch midway through the game saw the Colts score 3 unanswered trys, the pick of the bunch scored by second row McCaffery twice interchanging passes with ‘man of the match’ Leach to score, Leach then set up another try and scored himself to put the Colts out of reach using his pace to devastating effect. The new players fitted in well with only the line-out not quite working due to lack of practice, also a great stint of tackling by everyone to keep the big Sedgley forwards out.
It looks like the coaches were naturals at playing ‘dummy’ at the RFU First Aid course on Sunday too!
