Honours Even....

Today Gravesend U10s hosted 2 other clubs. Dartford had 2 teams and Park House had 1. The last time U10s met Dartford was at Blackheath in November when we drew or won most of the matches, unfortunately we weren’t as successful today.
Firstly we did a bit of training all together to get warmed up. This included Passing Practice and Rucking. Then we got onto the main reason why we were here!

Match 1: Gravesend Lightening vs Park House

We started strong, and easily broke through their defensive line to allow Sam to score a couple of quick tries. When it came to Park Houses’ run they didn’t seem to have the confidence and the G’s managed to hold them back. Working as a team we fought hard and managed to score another 2 tries (Finlay and Tom Fry). At half time to score was 4:0.
In the second half Park House upped their game and came out fighting. They found some gaps in our defence because we started to get over confident, and forgot to spread out across the whole of our defensive line. The final score was 4:3 and I was a little bit disappointed as I thought we were the stronger team.

Match 2: Gravesend Lightening vs Dartford (1)
Following the triumph from the first game our second game wasn’t as successful. Dartfordians had a big boy on their team who was really hard to tackle and knocked Tom (Fry) down. Following lots of really forceful tackling Dartford scored 2 tries to go ahead in the first half. Following a couple of injuries that meant losing 2 players from the squad, Lightening lost their confidence to fight and were reluctant to get stuck in. The game finished with Dartford scoring another try leaving the final score at a disappointing 0:3 

Match 3: Gravesend Lightening vs. Dartford (2)
After the shame of the previous match and with 2 of our key players still out through injury, we decided to get more aggressive and fight back. Despite tackling harder we could still not break our opposition and conceded 3 tries. In the last few minutes of the session, all was not lost. Sam scored a triumphant try which gave the rest of us a flash of hope and the motivation to try and even the score. Using the advantage of a Dartford player being out of touch, we pulled together and Tom Fry and Rhys passed the ball out to me and I pushed through their defensive line to score one last try. Alas Dartford managed 1 last try in the closing seconds of the match making the final result 2:4.
I think we need to work on our defensive line (spreading out and closing the gaps) and get more aggressive and support each other more in our tackles nevertheless I still enjoyed the day!!!
We look forward to meeting Dartford again soon in order to make our comeback.