Andover Set The Standard

Hi Saxons,

What a great day of rugby Sunday was. I knew Andover would be a tough team, they are one of the best teams in Hampshire, so I was concerned that they would run riot over us, but they did not. You played hard and put up a very good fight and performed better than I expected for periods of the matches.

We were dominant for the first quarter and it took Andover 8 minutes before they scored their first try. They were much better in the rucks and more aggressive with the ball in hand. We reverted to players shipping the ball on without giving it anything and there were a few players ‘going through the motions’ rather than tackling hard or rucking aggressively. That said, Andover had to work hard for all of their tries, they did not have any easy scores.

We lost each half (15 minutes) by 3 or 4 tries each. Our Tournament matches are 15 minutes long and I would expect 3-0 or 4-1 against Andover in a tournament at this stage of our development. It shows that we are in touch, they are not running riot over us and we can improve to match them. Andover didn’t smash us up, they had two big straight runners who we repeatedly held up and they were passing wide and attacking down the wings, so it was good rugby, it is how we can play our rugby when we get things right. James Diamond scored our consolation try in the last play as Ollie caught an Andover clearing kick 7m inside the Andover half and ran for the corner, James Diamond ran back to get onside and turned to support, Ollie straightened his run and fixed the defender and passed out to James who had one covering defender to beat with a big hand-off – it was an epic try, glad we had said last try wins!

Freddie B played well with some great hard tackling, Ollie showed the right level of aggression in attack and defence and set up our try. Liam, Jamie S, Freddie B, Ollie and Ashley all made half breaks, but we did not support them and they came to nothing. Ben P stepped up as Hooker when Alfie injured his shoulder and won all his scrums and seemed to enjoy it; he also had a blistering mini-break as well! Well done Ben. Zach played well again and was right in the thick of the battle, chased down the kicks and put pressure on Andover and the coaches unanimously voted him player of the week, well done.

I think we can improve on that performance and the areas we need to work on is our rucking and our aggression when we have the ball or we are clearing out - all the parents agreed our players are too nice.!

At the end we had no injuries (apart from Alfies old shoulder injury) and the Saxons had big smiles.

That was as hard as it gets, Andover are a tier one team in Hampshire, but if we improve our rucking and turn on the aggression we can match them.