Wins for U16s and U18s – reports on Saturday action

Reds U16s keep up winning habit

Reds U16s  53 – 7  Watsons U16B

Saturday 21 September 2024

Report by Nick Smith

“Dreich” was probably the most overused word across the central belt on Saturday morning, but the grey misty skies didn’t dampen any enthusiasm for our second game in the conference against George Watsons. We prepared ourselves for a tough encounter and potentially an aerial assault. but it turned out to be a rather different game than expected.

GW kicked off and placed the ball on sixpence into Ali B’s arms. He showed his pace on fresh legs and broke deep in the GW half, offloading to Angus M who was in to score behind the posts. We were 5-0 up within the first minute. So it was with a sense of deja vu that GW found themselves kicking off again just 120 seconds later. This time they kicked well to the other side of the pitch. However it wasn’t long before we found ourselves over the try line again. This time the score followed a rumble up the middle from Micah, quick ball from Joe down the back line, Alfie straightened up the run and the ball found its way to Ali who was in for the team’s second.

It was impressive to see the boys delivering on what we practiced on the training ground.  They set up their pods, sucked in the defence and then put it wide when the opportunity arouse. Alfie pulled the strings at fly half and made some great pick-ups off his toes at times and got his back line moving. This meant that we were a constant threat.

The next try came from some rather messy rucking with the ball changing hands with alacrity. Liam was the quickest to react, went blind and pinned his ears back to score in the corner. What followed was a momentous conversion from TJ defying the belief of coaches and spectators alike. He repeated the feat later in the game showing us it was in no way just luck following a try by Alex E in the corner.

The next try came again from what we have worked on in training: scanning for gaps.  Micah hit up and was tackled just short. Alfie looked up and saw what was on and called for it on the blind side. He timed his pass to Finlay M who dived over to score. Simple rugby executed to perfection.

GW were experimenting with their kick offs and this time kicked directly to Ali Mac. He took the ball and needed no more invitation than this. He got his rather high knees pumping and charged through the GW defence to score.

We then showed some indiscipline and gave away a series of penalties. GW saw this as an opportunity and through a series of kicks and tap penalties made steady ground up the pitch. Eventually this carry-on saw them over line to register themselves on the scorecard.

We weren’t done though and it was clear that TJ wanted more than a couple of conversions to his name. He pulled out every trick in his box: crashing up, handing-off, side stepping, changing pace, dummying before finding his way over for his score. This took us to half time.

At this point we took a leaf from South Africa’s copy book and made a near complete change to our forward pack. This gave us fresh momentum to set about GW again. However this half was curtailed slightly with the rather one sided scoreline and a number of injuries to the GW squad meaning the game was drawn to an early close.

There was however enough time for Calum to charge over for his try and Finlay Mac to score after some great support play and offload from Angus M.

Despite some good individual tries this was a team performance. The structure was good particularly in the first half and the boys showed a real commitment in defence to not let GW play. There will definitely be tougher games to come but the boys showed that they can take learning from the training ground into the game.

There were a few contenders for Player of the Match. Joe had a strong game with some good accurate passing and bossing the breakdown. All of the forwards came close given their level of commitment, with Micah in particular showing real improvement in his understanding of the game. However this week it goes to Alfie who had a dominant performance at 10, bossing the game and making great decisions on how to get the attack moving.

A couple of other mentions to those age qualified and playing for the under 15s. Fraser put in a strong performance playing the full game, Daniel put himself about. Scott and Max came on in the second half with Scott putting in some “tough” tackles and Max really changed the tempo of the game. Jay also was his usual tough tackling self on the wing.

Looking forward to that midweek cup game.