U13s excellent start to Berkshire league

Maidenhead U13s made an excellent start to their league programme by beating Thatcham 46-0 at Braywick, maintaining their unbeaten record for the season, despite the windy conditions. Four of their eight tries came from their strong-running back row. Thatcham competed well and on the run of play, were unlucky to concede such a large margin,  but they had no answer to the power of No 8 Tom Kay, who scored two tries; and of flankers  Mitchell Batten and Luke Knowles, who scored once each.

Ironically, it was by no means an outstanding performance. Even the back row did not function as a unit and some of the forward play, the scrummaging apart, left considerable room for improvement. Sam Stefan, at fly-half,  often found himself under pressure and to his credit, he kept the team's shape when it threatened to fall apart.

Probably the outstanding home player was Tom Lewis on the wing. Lewis is now fully recovered from a shoulder injury and showed exceptional quality and judgement. His ability to keep the ball alive was a marvel. Tom Hocking's timing of the pass was an object lesson to team-mates who tended to die with the ball and the team will struggle, on this form, if they meet opposition with more determination in the tackle. There was a bonus in the goal-kicking of Alastair Bruce who put over three well-judged conversions, despite the strong winds.

Tom Kay opened the scoring after the early pressure had come from Thatcham. Kay barged his way over after a diagonal run. Batten scored an even better try soon afterwards, running through most of the Thatcham defence to score from near the half-way line.  Lewis made a brave finishing burst for the third try and Kay scored the fourth from close range. Elliott Hawkes made it 29-0 by half-time with a try after Ollie Styles had attacked the blindside from scrum-half.

Maidenhead played against the strong wind in the second half but managed three more tries. A splendid run by Stefan set up a try by Chris Parrott; the best try of the match was scored when Ryan Christian crossed after sharp passing in the backs; and Knowles exploited the blindside from a late scrum to round off the scoring, by this time against a 14-man Thatcham. Maidenhead had three further tries ruled out by the referee.