London Scottish U16’s put in a good match performance to see off Local rivals Twickenham at Parkfields last Sunday. Spurred on by having Danny Kenny down from the first Xv to take the players through their warm-ups, and give advice throughout the match the players responded well and started to put some of the training ground moves into play.
On a cold morning at Parkfields London Scottish U16’s were delighted to see Danny Kenny down to help out for the early morning start. Danny took the boys through a warm-up session similar to that used by the first Xv which gave the boys focus for the start of the match. Warm-up over the team took to the field and started well. The early stages are always a period for settling in, but with a number of players playing in new positions the team worked well together and made sure Twickenham didn’t get a foothold form which to build.
After 10 minutes London Scottish were able to put the pressure on Twickenham in their 22m. The pressure told and a penalty was awarded 5m out. Tap and go, and there is no stopping Thomas from that distance, and he duly dived across the line in the left hand corner for the opening try. The difficult conversion was missed, and the team regrouped. Twickenham had some favoured runners who they used to carry the ball, however the Scottish defence was holding tight and didn’t give much away. Again Scottish started putting the pressure on, and after some great phases straight off the training pitch the boys took the ball from the half way line to deep into Twickenham’s 22. A couple of people tried pick and goes, and eventually Ted dived over from scrum half for the try out right. There were no further scores and the boys led 10-0 at half time.
Still all to play for, the boys needed to keep their focus if they were going to keep Twickenham out of the game. 16 mins into the second half play was stopped after Cameron received a high tackle when he was on one of his storming runs. Twickenham medical staff were on hand to tend to him well, but Cameron would spend the next 4 hours waiting for an ambulance to take him to hospital to get checked out. Later that evening Cameron was given the all clear form the Hospital which was great news. No doubt he’ll get a day off homework for that at least.
With a man down this could have been Twickenham’s chance to get back into the match, but the Scots started playing some of their best rugby now, and started putting together more multi-phase plays. Thomas popped up again to round one phase off with a try on the left which Ted duly converted. This was followed by more great phases of play with Will rounding off and scoring as a result.
Scottish lost a further player to a yellow card and Twickenham came driving back into the game, and had repeated penalties 5m form the Scottish line. Eventually they broke through and scored a try despite some great defence work from Scottish on their line.
Twickenham then lost a man for a yellow card and Scottish were able to control the game more in the final minutes. Finally, with the clock on red Scottish won a penalty 22m form the Twickenham line. Ted made the right call and rather than kick the ball out decided to spin the ball along the line. The disorganised Twickenham defence were unable to stop Konrad going in for the final try of the match. Ted converted, and Scottish gained a 29-5 win over their local rivals.
Well done guys, it was particularly good to see some of the phase play from training coming into the game more, and thanks Danny Kenny for helping the guys on the day.
