Second Away Win for Elks U12's.

The Elks u12’s made the journey up to North Notts for a swiftly re-arranged fixture against East Retford. In fresh but otherwise excellent playing conditions, both sides made a bright start with strong competition at the rucks and hard tackling, which was to continue throughout the match. Elks were first to score when Tom Caines quickly took advantage of a sliced clearance kick by Retford to ground the ball in the corner. Retford responded immediately with some good running and passing to touch down. The first quarter remained tight despite Elks stronger scrummaging and ended with Elks 3 tries to 2 up. Luke Moore scored his debut try after a well worked move and Cameron Greenfield also added to the score sheet.
Both sides brought on substitutes for the second quarter, and a new front row of Jordan Pritchett, Jordan Rathbone and Richard Hunt kept on the pressure at the set piece. Retford had difficulty containing the strong running from Tom Caines, Aiden Norris, Zack Lebeter and Cameron Greenfield and the tries started to come. Some good passing saw Middleton power along the touchline to score another corner try, whilst Norris and Greenfield also drove over. Having missed a couple of early attempts at goal, Fly half Smith was starting to find his range and slotted over 8 conversions in the match.
The third quarter saw Connelly, Cox and Walker return to the front row and the tough forwards exchanges continued, with Billy Derbyshire and Robbie Boddington rucking and tackling hard. Elks were making good use of their ball with some good distribution from Middleton at scrum half. The wings Corrigan and Rose were starting to get more opportunity to run with ball in hand as Elks won this quarter 3-1 with tries from Middleton and Corrigan.
Some Retford heads were starting to drop in the last quarter as the relentless pressure from the Elks running continued. Boddington picked up and drove to score early in the quarter. Norris caught the ball on the re-start and immediately charged through the entire Retford half to score, despite losing a boot! The Retford forwards continued to compete strongly at the ruck and an injury to Caines had forced some reshuffling of positions in the backline. Retford took advantage of some early confusion to get the ball wide and were able to score a consolation try after some uncharacteristically lax defending.
With a final score of 71 points to 24, this second outing for the young Elks shows that they continue to make good progress and the newcomers are making early contributions to good all round team performance.

Man of the Match
Forwards : Aidan Norris
Backs : Ben Middleton

Rupert Boddington