After a break of over a month Trentham’s u7s came together and played 3 x 10 minute tag games against Longton this week in a home fixture. Seven boys played for the side this week including alphabetically: Jacob, James, Joseph, Mason, Owain, Stan and Zeb. Once again they were very well supported with lots of parents and relatives from both Trentham and Longton packing the somewhat sodden touchlines.
Ade and I warmed up the u7s this week and were pleasantly surprised to see that despite the long gap in any exposure to rugby practice they weren’t as rusty as we’d expected. The warm ups and pre-match handling drills boded well for the game and the u7s did not disappoint. The boys were rotated about with 5 on the pitch and 2 on the sidelines for each match. Every player scored at least one try this week with James scoring several good angled running efforts and Mason outstanding with a glut of tries (I lost count of how many he scored but no doubt he remembers!). The ball was recycled amongst them very well and they are learning to hit the ball at pace from restarts which is getting the team on the front foot nicely and going forward. Additionally they are calling for the ball better and thus beginning to communicate on the field as they should.
Concentration is the key for this group of players. When they ‘switch on’ they play really well and look good both going forward and defend solidly. When they ‘switch off’ the other team runs in soft tries with no tagging at all from the Trentham u7s. Fortunately they were switched on a lot more than they were switched off this week and consequently got the better of Longton across the 3 games. Getting back ‘on side’ is still problematic but we will persevere and eventually they’ll get it.
Man of the match this week easily goes to Mason who was simply excellent with the ball in hand, scavenged several loose 50:50 balls off the floor (that were all converted into Trentham tries) and was as committed in defence as anybody else in the side. Well done Mason – keep up the endeavour and enthusiasm.