Apologies this is late

Beckenham RFC U7's first New Years Cup festival Medway

Beckenham B 5 – 10 Medway B
Beckenham A 4 – 4 Medway A
Beckenham A 4 – 6 Blackheath A
Beckenham B 2 – 9 Blackheath B
Beckenham mixed 4 – 3 Beckenham Ireland mixed

With the Christmas and New Year festivities tucked firmly in our waste lines we made our way in to Kent, almost France as it was described, to Medway RFC for The New Years Cup.

As the day began the blue and gold made their way onto the pitch to start out with some warm ups and a huge game of bulldog with our hosts Medway.

The game schedules were changed to ensure that all three clubs played each other twice (ourselves, Medway and Blackheath), this resulted in us needing to form an A and B squad on the fly to give the boys a chance rather than having our normal mixed ability squads.

Both Medway and Blackheath had large squads with them and some very large and opposing looking team members, but with the normal Beckenham do or die spirit we took to the pitch.

Our first game was against Medway B and this proved a little too much for us, however we never gave up, there was some good play by all of our boys.

Game 2, Medway A, this was a very well balanced match with lots of clean passing and the ball going from end to end. Although the boys were playing catch-up throughout the match on the score line, in the last few plays of the match we were firing on all cylinders and with some great passing and some superb swerving body movements we held them to a 4 – 4 draw.

Game 3, Blackheath A squad. As I am sure you know by now Blackheath are formidable opponents regardless of age group. This didn’t faze our boys as they stood to face them before kickoff. The game quickly became one which proved Beckenham can take on any team; the score does not do any justification to the match. We battled hard and took our chances well; you could see on the faces of the Beckenham players the determination for a win. With a few minutes left to play we went ahead 5 – 4 only for the try to be disallowed, disappointing yes, but such is the nature of the game. At the restart we were not quite ready and a swift pass from Blackheath saw them speed to the line to score. We came back at them and were almost on the Blackheath try line when unfortunately our player ended up on the floor and the ball was snatched from his hands allowing Blackheath to score their 6th try.

Game 4, Blackheath B squad. As with all large clubs their B squad are as equally good as their A’s so unfortunately the game did not go our way. However we did not lose heart and despite a few bumps and a couple of injuries we kept going. This was not a good game for us but probably the one I am most proud of purly for the level of sportsmanship shown by the lads. Yes winning is great but conduct on the pitch is just as important. There was no despondency from Beckenham at all and at this age that’s a rare thing to see.

All in all the boys played extremely well against two very strong clubs and we now also have two more boys who have got themselves on the scoring sheet by scoring their first ever trys no mean feat against clubs like these.

Game 5 was to decide who was coming 5th and 6th in the competition. This was Beckenham in both slots so we reverted back to mixed teams, team Beckenham and team Beckenham Ireland as they wore green bibs. This really was good playing by the boys with some superb passing and pitch awareness from everyone.

Well done to all the boys who played, you should all be very pleased with yourselves, as a coach I am very proud and impressed with how you never lost heart and kept going.

Cheers

Stuart