Saxons Compete with New Milton

Hi Saxons,

Well done for a great effort today. It was never going to be easy playing New Milton, they were County finalists this year and have a large strong squad.. They play quick rugy and move the ball well, offload and have lots of support players ready to take the ball on, so they are hard to contain. New Milton scored early and then followed up with some more well worked tries as the Saxons struggled to organise themselves. With 8 minutes gone we were four tries down and the fixture looked ominous. But then the Saxons steadied the ship, calmed down and started to exert pressure on New Milton. Liam was first to score, followed by Jack and the end of the second half saw us place a lot of pressure on New Milton, pinning them in their own half and we had opportunities for further scores if we had spotted where our overlaps were.

This was a good period for the Saxons, you learned from the opening minutes and were then competetive with New Milton, who were rahter surprised at how strong you came back at them and it was there turn to be slightly panicky. They eased the pressure with a well worked break away try beefore Jack scored again to finish the half 25-15.

The Saxons fought on in the second half, with Jack scoring again, but New Milton eased ahead with great breaks supported by support players arriving in time to take the ball forward. The match finished 55-20 to New Milton.

The New Milton coaches praised the Saxons for the excellent competetive game which they had not found easy and believed that we had a big strong pack and scrum.

Areas for us to improve would be our rucking and competing for the ball, we lost too many rucks today and then our support play, with players not arriving at the rucks in time to compete.

It was a good performance, we have seen one of the best teams in the county and we know we can score against them and compete for periods in the game.

Next week we play Fordingbridge in the Cup and this was an ecellent warm-up for that game. If we play with the same intensity as we did in the end of th efirt half today we will be competetive.