A bright and frosty morning greeted 19 U16s at Aldershot Park and 15 Players from Guildfordians. This was going to be a test as to which league we were going to try for as U17 next season. Guildfordians are in Surrey Division 2, which is where London Irish B play, We play Gosport and Fareham next Sunday who are in the lower half of Hampshire Division 2, the outcome of that game, will be our deciding factor, in which League we try to put the U17s in.
Barry and Ant took the lads through the warm up and Ant selected the starting 15, Sam Maguire, Tom Baker and Alastair Rom for the front row, JP and Aaron Ireland at 4 and 5, Tom Catchpole at 6 and Dave Ranson in his usual 7 shirt, Nick back in his original No 8, Ed Brown who has made the 9 his own and Graham Love at 10, Ryan Canning and Andy Bell at 12 and 13, with Phil Cresswell at 11 and Ray Wright, who had made a great recovery after his trip in the Ambulance last week, at his usual 14 and Sean Sutton wearing the 15 shirt again. Davy Armstrong, Tom Cross, Mike Sweeney and Tom Brett on re-hydration and bench warming duty for the 1st half.
Guildford kicked off and A&F made some great penetrative runs from the start, Nick making some great carries and tackles, the game was very evenly matched with scrumming and mauls although several rucks were given away, we must concentrate on securing these loose ball situations. Just about 10 minutes in, Phil won a ball on his right wing and cleverly kicked across to Ray who carried made up almost the whole of Guildfords 1/2 before going into touch. The resulting Guildford line out was won by them but some great pressure from Andy forced them to touch down behind, for a 22m scrum, which they unconvincingly won and again under pressure their kick came to Graham who went over for the 1st try on about 12 minutes. With the conversion missed 5v0. Guildford came straight back and it was a very evenly contested game, a few handling errors with our backs gave more possession to Guildford than they possibly deserved and they had gone into the lead with 2 converted tries by 25 minutes. A very well worked piece of pressure though, saw Ryan go over almost under the posts and the resulting kick bounced off the post just on 1/2 time, 10 v 14.
2nd half saw Graham gallantly going on for Guildfordians, after they suffered an injury. Mike replaced him at Fly half, Davy came on for Aaron, Tom Brett on for Ray and Phil went to his usual Full Back as Tom Cross came on at 14 and replaced Sean. Within 2 minutes, it seemed that this was a winning formula as a well worked move allowed Tom Cross to go over for his 1st try for the club, the kick was narrowly missed to make 15 v 14, Guildford though were not giving up and soon pulled up to 19 points with an unconverted try, Nick then ran a powerful hard won “forwards” try, and probably the hardest position all afternoon Ryan converted to make 22 v 19, Guildford duly scored and converted again for 26 points. However the forwards were not leaving it there and Nick fought hared for yet another well fought try (unconverted) to make the winning score the closest it could be 27 v 26.
Everybody fought hard and we have to say that we deserved to win, it could have been easier though, some of the harder won tries could so easily have been backs tries as the backs always got re-aligned and were ready for the passes that sometimes could have been made, we missed on a few occasions where quick safe passes could have put some safe distance on Guildford, Line out were very good and we won at least 2 against the head.
Overall very well done lads and you made your supporting parents very happy at the final whistle. Heads down for next Sunday and Gosport and Fareham.