25th April 2010 - Under 7's Cheddar Festival

Report by Simon Marshall

FESTIVAL REPORT

The Cheddar Festival was the culmination of our year of training and matches. An opportunity for the boys to put all the skills they have learned into practise and the first tournament for all of them.

The under 7's squad for the festival was as follows;

Archie Attwood (Captain)
Sam Cobb
Ben Jackson
Oliver Halliday
Oscar Hallett
Tristan Marshall
Nicholas Payne
Thomas Small
Patrick Lockyer
Callum Bolton

The format for the day was two pools of six teams with each team playing each other. Winners of each pool would go through to the final and second place teams into the plate final.

Our first game was against Gordano. It was an excellent performance both in attack and defence against a very strong and well drilled team but in the end we won convincingly.

Next Keynsham, pre-tournament favourites. They were a really good side with a couple of outstanding players. We were quickly two tries to nil down but after that fought back valiantly to square the match at half time. A couple of mistakes towards the end meant we lost by a single try but the result was a huge credit to the boys and the coaches from the other teams in the pool watching described it as a "fantastic game of rugby"

Our third pool game was with Cheddar who never really got into their stride and it was an easy win for us.

Chard were our next opponents and if we could beat them we were pretty much assured a place in the Plate final. Unfortunately it did not go according to plan. Some early handling errors put us behind and we never quite made it back into the game. Chard were excellent and never made any errors, just taking to ball forward directly and their support play was outstanding. In the end we lost again by a single try.
Our final match again was a relatively easy one again Cinderford who never really had an answer to our very potent attack.

In the end we needed Gordano to beat Chard in the last pool game. They tried hard but in the end lost narrowly and that was the end of the tournament for us.

To sum up it was an excellent day for Pethy under 7's despite not progressing to the latter stages of the Festival. The boys all gave it 100% and performed incredibly well. We got closer to anyone in the tournament to beating eventual winners, Keynsham.

In five games we scored forty one tries. This equated to one try every one minute and forty five seconds! More details about the try scorers can be found below.

Special thanks for the day must go to Roger, Lee & Ian for doing such a great job of coaching the boys and keeping them motivated. Also to Richard for organising our entry and to Gavin for bringing his gazebo, without which it would have been a very cold and wet day for us all. Finally to all the parents who throughout the year have travelled round the South West supporting their children and generally standing around and getting cold!

Thanks also to Cheddar RFC for their all round excellent organisation of the Festival and for making it so enjoyable.

MATCH 1

NPRFC 7 TRIES VS GORDANO 4 TRIES

Scorers:

Sam Cobb – 2; Ben Jackson – 2; Oscar Hallett – 2; Oliver Halliday – 1

MATCH 2

NPRFC 7 TRIES VS KEYNSHAM 8 TRIES

Scorers:

Sam Cobb – 3; Ben Jackson – 2; Archie Attwood – 1; Nick Payne – 1

MATCH 3

NPRFC 10 TRIES VS CHEDDAR 3 TRIES

Scorers:

Sam Cobb – 3; Oscar Hallett – 3; Ben Jackson – 1; Oliver Halliday – 1; Nick Payne – 1; Callum Bolton – 1

MATCH 4

NPRFC 7 TRIES VS CHARD 8 TRIES

Scorers:

Sam Cobb – 3; Callum Bolton – 2; Oscar Hallett – 1; Ben Jackson – 1

MATCH 5

NPRFC 10 TRIES VS CINDERFORD 4 TRIES

Scorers:

Sam Cobb – 5; Ben Jackson – 2; Archie Attwood – 1; Callum Bolton – 1; Patrick Lockyer – 1