Royston U13's suffer at the hands of Cambridge despite a valiant effort
There was no match against Harlow as they do not have an under 13s team. We were lucky enough to get a friendly against Cambridge RFC
Unfortunately it was not the result we wanted, however as a coach, I could not have asked for anymore effort or commitment. I said to the boys before we started that I was not to concerned about the result as long as they played their best footy. In my opinion, the boys played as well as they were aloud from the opposition. Dont get me wrong, we have a number of areas to work on over the next couple of weeks, but there were a lot more positives than negatives.
Not knowing the exact stats, but I reckon we had only about 40% of the ball. When we did have it, it was in poor field position. Our defence did lack at times, but considering the amount of times we were defending and the position on the field we were defending from, the score line could have been far worse.
We did start a little slow in the first third and I feel we gave them too much respect, the second third was awesome, the boys really stepped up. The talking, tackling and the commitment to each other was faultless. The final third Cambridge had fresher legs and about 300 more boys than ours!!
Every boy played very well, but I want to highlight a few individual performances mainly of those from the back line.
James Kirby directed the boys very well when he came on, his constant chatter and organisational skills was great. The tackling from the whole back line was (most of the game) brilliant! Everyone, Dom, Ben, Max, Gus, Freddy Eddy and Charlie, at different times during the game, they all saved potential tries from great tackling.
The forwards, all tried very hard individually, together not so good. Their forwards were much bigger but more importantly hunted together as a pack (something for us to work on). But two standouts in the forwards for me were, little Will, who time after time snapped the Cambridge boys in half!! Rhys Deer was destructive again. Again, all the forwards worked very hard, too hard! If they worked together more, it would have been a little easier.
Well done to all