U10's Huge improvement in just an hour.

We travelled en masse today to have a quick return fixture against Penrith. Our numbers were severely depleted by the lurgy and other holiday commitments, but we still had 18 players to take on Penrith. As Penrith had 9 players, we decided to play 4 x 15 minute games, with our two teams rotating from training to playing to training to playing.

Game 1.From the kick off, Penrith were sharp, very sharp and seemed to break through our lines at will. The score went in Penriths favour way quite rapidly and we seemed to have forgotten the really good things that we’d worked on in training before Christmas. One thing that wasn’t lacking however was our effort and willingness to keep on trying. It wasn’t enough to beat Penrith in this game, but it did improve our performance.

Game 2. Our other team now came on and got another ‘portion’ from Penrith. Penrith tackled very effectively and especially in ruck/maul situations were just to ‘savvy’ for us. As the fixture went on, we started making better progress towards the tryline, but we were thwarted in our efforts. Sometimes we carried on driving forwards when we could have padded the ball, sometimes we passed when we could have carried on driving and sometimes we seemed to rely on a few players to do the hard work, rather than everyone pitching in.

Game 3. The short training session that we’d held really paid rich dividends as the original team came out again and were a lot more positive in their approach. The tackling was lower and was more committed. The player in possession seemed to have more ‘drive’ than before and the team looked a lot sharper. In this game, Penrith came out on top, but the Hornets pushed them a lot closer.

Game 4. After a brief training session, Martins team came pitchside to watch the above game. Wow, what a difference that made. The Hornets seemed to have lit the blue touchpaper and came out with a new positive attitude and took the game to Penrith. This time it was Penriths turn to be knocked backwards in the tackle and this encouraged the Hornets even more. Penrith were now on the backfoot and it was their turn to put in the tackles. Kendals mauling and rucking had improved considerably in the mornings session and we now saw some ripping in the mauls, effective clearing out in the rucks (including some excellent crocodile rolls) and most satisfying of all, a couple of well executed pieces of counter rucking. As confidence increased, so did the try count and in game 4, Kendal came out on top.

This is a cracking set of players, supported admirably by their parents who never ceased to encourage the players to play good rugby and even more importantly, enjoy their rugby. A great deal of rugby comes down to confidence and self belief. In every fixture this self belief is becoming more and more evident. Today, Dynamo went from being an enthusiastic tackler to an effective, enthusiastic tackler. The Viking discovered an ability to drive the opposition backwards and to keep on driving them backwards. White Shadow made some VERY effective tackles in defence and was very effective in attack – typified by a couple of offloads for a teammate to score just before the tryline. Ninja was stunning. He tackled, ran, ripped, rucked and linked play all morning and by his play, lifted everyone around him.

All in all, a cracking mornings rugby and our thanks go to our hosts at Penrith for arranging the fixture and their hospitality. A further thank you goes to the referee for the way that he ran all four games, both on and off the pitch.

We’ve now got several weeks without a fixture, which is valuable time to build on the core skills of rugby, as well as some of the finer points of the game. To say that we have only been playing for four months, our progress is staggering and this training time will be a real bonus to us.

Paul

Today Players Player Of The Week, as voted on Teamer is The Terminator (formerly White Shadow). Well deserved. Again worth mentioning is that The Terminatot was was one of players who got nominated for the award, some for the first time.

On 19th Jan, after training, the U10’s are having a presentation by David about our plans for the team for the future. This is for Parents AND Players and we’d really like ALL of the U10’s Parents and Players to be there. There are so many good and positive things for us to share with you, that we’ve booked out one of the rooms at the Club, just for us.