A chance for us to judge our progress so far…..

With the visit of the long established Kirkby Lonsdale team to the Hornets, it was going to be a great opportunity to judge how our newly formed teams were taking to rugby. And the verdict is, Very Well Indeed.

We played on the Millenium pitch today and we had 24 U10 Hornets to offer a game to the 16 players from KL. KL elected to play 8 a side without subs and the fixtures commenced. I reffed one game, with Martin coaching from the side, whilst David reffed the other game, with Mark coaching from the side.

With our Policy of ‘every player plays’ and ‘every player gets even game time’, at times it was quite congested, with a steady adding and taking away of players, but the rich dividend of every player getting valuable game time to run, maul, tackle, pass (& score tries !) made it worth while. As the fixtures progressed, the confidence, skills and most importantly team work of the Hornets improved significantly and by the end of the fixtures they were playing as though they had been together for years, rather than just two months.

In the coming months, we will continue to work on improving the players Core Skills as these will hold them in good stead for many years to come. In the short term, we’ll be carrying on working on the excellent team spirit and camardarie that exists within the U10 Hornets.

In the second game that I reffed, the Hornets scored three near identical tries towards the end --- player A ran hard and fast in a straight line towards the try line, they were held up by a couple of KL defenders and managed to offload the ball in the challenge to Player B. Player B then used a scrum half pass to player C, who shipped the ball out wide to Player D who was in space to score the try.

What was significant was that in each of the three tries A, B, C & D were never the same players. Team work of the highest order and something that is of true merit to the players.

The Training Fixture was a great fixture and we can now see the enormous progress that the players have made.

It takes 2 clubs to make a great fixture and credit needs to be given to the the players, coaches and parents from Kirkby Lonsdale. In some instances they were playing under slightly different interpretations of the New Rules Of Play but they quickly adapted to them and took advantage of the freedom that the New Rules allowed

I can safely speak for all of the U10 players, parents and coaches when I say that we’re already looking forwards to the return fixture at KL in February

Paul

p.s, congratulations to Tom Keast for winning the Players Player of the Week Vote on Teamer. In the three fixtures that we've played this season, 12 different players have been nominated by their teammmates for Player Of The Week - thats a team and a half !