Festival Touch Down
Despite the weather's best efforts, on Wednesday 20th September, Eversfield held its annual U11 Michaelmas Rugby Festival. A small four team format, it allows all the schools taking part to play a number of matches at the start of the season, to help iron out skills and techniques being worked on in training and also highlight other areas to focus improvements. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the inaugural festival, and it was fitting that The Croft, Bablake and King Henry should take part, as they did in that first year.
Eversfield's first game was against The Croft. Historically The Croft are very strong at rugby and this year was no exception. Eversfield struggled with the speed at which The Croft played, with the defensive line being stretched and broken on a number of occasions. The team worked hard, the tackling improved, rucking was a particular strength throughout the game, but The Croft were comfortable winners in the end.
The next match was against Bablake, last year's winners and current holders of the cup. Again, the Eversfield defensive line struggled with the speed of play and found itself stretched. Bablake had some very powerful and fast runners with the ball in hand, and they were able to find the gaps in the field and make their strength and speed count. A good win for Bablake.
The final match pitted Eversfield against King Henry. A shaky start saw King Henry score right from the kick off, but Eversfield galvanised and were pushing hard for a score of their own. In the opposition 22, pushing for that elusive try, King Henry won turn over ball to run in for a try. 2-0 at the half. Eversfield did not give up and finally scored a try, to bring the game back to a 1-point score. As the second half wore on, King Henry scored 2 more tries to Eversfield's one; 4-2 to King Henry.
A tough but enjoyable afternoon, the team worked really hard and made some good improvements over the three matches. As noted earlier, the rucking was a positive all afternoon, the individual tackling of the players improved, but there is still work to do on the team's defensive line.
Finally, congratulations to the The Croft, who won all of their fixtures to take the cup this year.