A nice day out to New Milton provided some formidable opposition in the form of Wimborne, Bournemouth, New Milton and Eastleigh in the usual Festival format.
Celts were only able to put out a squad of 12 due to holiday commitments but they sure made up for the shortfall in numbers!
From Billy May:
The squad did the shirt and all their coaches/parents proud. Harrison Bennett and Oliver Smith great line breaks and finishing, Jake Hoare and William May tackles and breakdown work immense, Morgan Claytons ripping the ball in the tackle more than once, Jamie Arnold steady influence in attack and defence, William May has found his offloading skills again and created 3 tries from them. Kai Williams great tackling and support, Jack Weeks-McDermott at the ruck was strong, Joseph Merchant-Locke some great tackles on players bigger than him, the most pleasing part was the rest of the squad upping their game to strengthen the team: Charlie McLaughlin, Charlie Noble, Daniel Walker; they made their tackles, rucked and ending in a fantastic team try in last group game. We matched Alton in the final were 1-0 down at half time, second half we were 2-1 down and made 2 mistakes which they scored from we had all the territory but their defence and our options cost us the game. At no time did their heads go down they just kept going forward and trying to score. Areas to work on are defence org at rucks, we defended too tight and Alton exploited this, our decision making in attack i.e. Where the space is. All in all the experienced players were outstanding to a man and the emerging players stepped up consistently throughout the tournament. A pleasure to game coach these players today.
Victoria Smith:
What a fantastic day we had!!! Here are the scores and try scorers. It really was a team effort!
Game 1 v Wimborne
First half tries William May, Oliver Smith (3) great play between them - Will offloading fantastically after running through defence, great support play Ollie
HT score 4-0
Second half Harrison Bennett (length of the pitch try)
FT score 5-0
Game 2 v Bournemouth
First half tries Harrison Bennett, Oliver Smith (2) - both players supporting Jake Hoare, William May, Morgan Clayton
HT 3-0
Second half Harrison Bennett (2) (great offloading by Ollie and good supporting play Harrison) Bournemouth scored a consolation try in the dying seconds
FT 5-1
Game 3 v New Milton
First half tries Harrison, Jake Hoare - wonderful blockbusting run- with lots of support play. Jack Weeks-McDermott - they lost possession on our try line, Jack seized possession and ran through 2 defenders to score right on half time.
HT 3-0
Second half Ollie - ran through 4 defenders. New Milton scored after this
FT 4-1
Game 4 v Eastleigh
First half tries Harrison - great support play to Morgan, Ollie Smith - length of the field with fantastic support all the way from Charlie McLaughlin
HT 2-0
Second half Ollie, Morgan Clayton - amazing team effort try started off with a Charlie Noble run, offloaded to Daniel Walker, Joseph Merchant-Locke rucking to retain possession, Jamie Arnold passing to Morgan Clayton who crashed over!!! William May, great solo effort through defenders
FT 5-0
Group winners, conceding only 2 tries but scoring 19!
Game 5 v Alton "Cup Final"
great defence first half 0-1 HT
they scored straight after half time. Ollie then scored a great solo try from restart making it 1-2.
a couple of mistakes allowed them to get 2 tries. Our heads didn’t go down once, they all stayed positive.
FT 1-4 the Alton coach said the score line didn’t reflect the game.
The parents voted for player of the day - Oliver Smith
Billy May helped out by John McDermott
What a day!!
Victoria
Superb stuff, wish I could have been there to see it!!