Sunday 26th September 2004

Sunday 26th September saw 70 Under 11s squeeze into one pitch at Braywick for a joint practice session with Windsor. Designed to give both clubs a little taste of what they can expect of the U11 game at their respective tournaments over the next fortnight, the aim was to rotate different squads through short supervised game simulations, giving every player an opportunity to play.

Honours were about even on the day and there were some flashes of excellent play from both “old hands” and those new to the squad. Jonathan Perry showed an unsuspected turn of speed, only to be undone by confusing pitch markings! He got there in the end though! Leo Smith picked up his try scoring habit of last season. Huw Kmiot joined in the fun. Oliver Bartlett and Dominik Bart won the ‘best ripping in the maul’ competition. Dhruv Surya and Max O’Connor put in some fantastic tackles. Will Thompson and Sam McCarthy seem to be settling in very well, with both being very involved.

We were very pleased to welcome Tim Johnson as occasional visiting coach. Tim recently returned from the amazing U16 tour of Canada (see elsewhere on this website) and is currently playing with the U17s, but looking to add a bit of coaching experience to his rugby knowledge. Having a current player on the coaching team is great and we hope Tim continues to give the boys some valued (up to date!) tips.

The session also highlighted some areas where all need to improve (not surprising 3 weeks into the season), as well as a couple of factors we will have to contend with more than once this season: the first of these is that we don’t have the biggest forwards squad (bulk, not numbers), so we will have to be better drilled, faster and smarter than our opponents; the second relates to variable refereeing. Even professional refs are fallible; volunteers on a Sunday morning are bound to be. The boys have to learn discipline and to remember the old adage that the referee is always right, even when he is wrong!

For the record, though, refs were wrong in several important areas yesterday:

1. the scrum is not allowed to be wheeled more than 45 degrees (nor are players allowed to slip their binding)

2. the offside line at the scrum for both teams is the rearmost foot of the scrum, not 7 metres back and

3. yes, you are allowed to charge down conversions at U11!!

See you all next week! .