CRUFC U16 24 - 20 Colchester U16

Rugby World cup, Ryder Cup, the Ashes, this match is historically up there as contests go and our boys were under no illusion.

Although we were pretty depleted through injury and absence, the boys were clearly up for it as Colchester came straight at us and got a penalty (sound familiar?) pushed us to our line and scored, at this point we were all cool on the touch line, this is how we always play, isn’t it? The scrum seemed to settle us, a quick break for an injury for Coops to break from a line out to a scrum from which they countered, crunching tackle by WillB for WillP to outrageously steal, SamBT scrapped but they switched & broke again. Line out, scrum, WillP stole again, scrum, they countered and were stopped by a blinding tackle by Jack. Scrum, we were standing firm, line out & Coops cleared giving us a breather, Hamish burgled a loose ball for a line out, penalty to us and again, Coops whipped a ball to WillP who punished the mistakes with our 1^st try. Although they came straight back, the half ended 5:5, pretty fair.

Second half started with a fierce series of midfield contests, scrum, penalty to them, scrum until they eventually went over with their 2^nd, de ja vu. The battle carried on with them surging to our 10 mtr for a line out, tapped down by Buff Tuff into a storming WillP for another line out. Again SamBT got it, penalty to us, another line out, Bod tapped to Noah who swept it to Coops, pass, yes passed to Dan impossibly to Jack for a scrum, Coop broke, chipped, scooped and went over to equalise and convert, great play, shame about the hair. Touch line cheeks firmly clenched, line out, Bod went down, they broke and went over for their 3^rd try, down, us? noooo, the boys were straight at them, Dan, WillP and CallumA tackling like gladiators, line out, this time Webby blasted through for a scrum. Here we had an edge; Callum picked and went all the way to go ahead, again for try # 3. Now it was a contest, Colchester attacked, we countered with that lovely majestic back line Callum to Coops to WillP to Jack to WillP to touch, line out won, WillP went again, lost it and they countered to our 5 mtr and place their 4^th sealing the match, or so we thought. With less than 2 minutes to go, do or die was live and kicking, they had the ball and rightly hung onto it, but Finlay was having none of it and eventually turned it, comically, the ball bounced off Jacks head into WillP’s hands, offloaded to WillB who hit the gas and went through 3 tackles to place our 4^th and win the game, awesome.

This was the best team performance to date, a delight to watch for a neutral, a bit tense of you were from Cambridge though.

Try scoreres:-

William Parker, Sean Cooper, Callum Austin & William Blackwell

Conversions:-

Sean Cooper 2 from 4 attempts