U9s
Matches
Sun 24 Mar 2019
Nottingham casuals
10
35
Ilkeston RUFC
U9s
U9 Elks versus Casuals (A)

U9 Elks versus Casuals (A)

Jake Farrow25 Mar 2019 - 12:08
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Performance of the season

Wow, wow, wow and wow again......
My goodness, the boys must have had 4 shredded wheat before they played today !!!! In a changed fixture, we were kindly invited to play a game v Nottingham Casuals rather than training at the Stute and I am sure everyone agreed it was worthwhile. There was a great atmosphere down at the Canal-side as the sun was out and the pitch didn't resemble the Somme which is change to our usual conditions. We were warmly welcomes by Miles and his coaching staff and we arranged to have 1 match pitch and Skills Zone for the remainder of the team players). Miles was very keen to adopt some of the newly learned CARDS principles into the U9 environment and credit to him for this - the feedback from the players was that it was very good. We had some concentration issues whilst warming up so the boys were sent away for 5 minutes and asked to come back with their sensible hats on. Fair play to them all as they actually came back with a really positive attitude.
First game got started and it was very clear that the lads were up for it. From the first whistle the boys sprinted off the line (we need to watch out for off side as we move up the age groups though!) and closed down their ball carriers,snapping into every tackle in the midfield. The boys were really going for it. The other team made mistakes due to our pressure and we scored 3 tries in the first 5 minutes without Casuals getting out of their half. We pushed them back all first half and had them penned in on the try line for ages. Second half was very similar with positive and powerful running to score tries. The boys absolutely dominated and ended up scoring 7 tries in game 1. It won't always be so simple to overpower teams and we still need to encourage more passing and movement and better positioning
Game 2 saw much of the same but Casuals had definitely been shocked in game 1 and came out in game 2 with a bit more of a resistance. They scored some good tries, both through the middle and wide, where we just missed the first tackle really, especially side on tackles...but
again we scored a number of excellent and diverse tries with the spoils being shared across the team. There were so many stand out performances on the day and the lads continue to make it so difficult for the weekly awards.
Coaches Player went to Max Tooley who is a complete powerhouse. Using his size and strength he bulldozes through so many players and only stops when he scores a try or the ref calls tackle - another great performance today with Casuals players hanging off him everywhere.....
Players Player went to Liam Gant who never fails to impress. Such a nice lad, he took a couple of knocks today but soldiered on and showed how strong he is running with the ball and also what an unselfish player he is when he sees the better option to pass (a lesson to others)
Tackle of the day went to Henry Gallagher who chased down a player who was clean through on the right wing (not many other players would have got close to this lad) and tackled him about 2m short of the line - awesome
Try of the day went to Jamie Moir - once he actually got to the game (!), he played in the 2nd match and showed a surprising turn of speed and great power to score a lovely try leaving Casuals players in his wake.....rumour has it there might have even been a side step at some point. Well done, Jamie
Decision of the Day went to Frankie Gallagher for realising well before he went into contact that there was a good passing option further wide. This resulted in a try on the other side of the pitch (the referee actually didn't allow it but the tackler ripped the ball just short of the line - ripping isn't allowed at this age so for the purposes of this report, the "penalty" try was awarded by me )
Again, no one gave any less than 100% and it was a magnificent team performance. So much so that the Casuals coaches were sharing their admiration at our quality, especially in the contact areas. Lovely club, Casuals, happy to change out any training fixture for a game with them. We are discussing some non contact, off season / new season training options with their coach, Miles, when we meet again at the Matlock festival. Performance of the season so far. Credit to all the lads again this week. See you at Matlock next week....

Match details

Match date

Sun 24 Mar 2019

Kickoff

10:30

Attendance

20
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