We were drawn in pool 1, against Cobham, Richmond and Esher.

The first game was against the same Cobham team we met in the Guildford festival. We knew it would be a tough game from our previous match, but the performance here showed improvement from our last meeting. Tackles were being made with far more confidence, and we seemed able to retain the ball better in spells. Cobham did breach of defence, but they had to work hard and go wide to get their first score. We hit back, but unfortunately Matthew was denied by the additional lines on the pitch. The team never gave up we were rewarded with try from a restart, which saw Tom P drive up half (of a very large!) pitch, and from the resulting 'pile up', Jack darted over. The final score was 4-1 but we were competitive throughout.

In the next game, we were up against Richmond. Again at times our defence was fantastic - tackles were going in and most memorable was Pippa's last gasp effort to deny what looked like a certain try. Whilst Richmond did eventually get ahead, we were able to keep in touch, with Matthew getting a deserved score. The game remained in the balance, and the referee played an advantage from a high tackle on Harvey, which allowed Gianluca to make a cheeky break down the blindside, which he finished off. Richmond got one more score, to close the game out 4-2.

Next up were Esher, who we had trained with a few weeks back. We knew they had a number of strong runners in their team, but to their credit our team tackled superbly, and Esher only led 1-0 at half time. Perhaps the back-to-back games caught up with us here, as in the second half, Esher hit us with a number of turnovers, which allowed them to cut lose and run out clear winners.

It was great to take a full squad to this tournament and give Arlen and Matthew their first taste of festival rugby. Everyone who represented us did us proud.

Thanks to Mark for you help and to our band of supporters!

Fabs

NB Photos to follow soon!