Grasshoppers 28-0 Horsham
Our first game was up against hosts Grasshoppers (& eventual winners) who finished second in Middlesex League 1 . With a couple of last minute drop outs and Jordan Bell leaving the field after a knock to the head following a brave tackle, we were down to a squad of 12 players for the day.
For the first 5 minutes Horsham were great - retaining possession & camped in their 22, but we failed to turn this pressure into points.
Grasshoppers then scored a couple of trys which was disappointing as we committed too many players to the breakdown leaving our defensive line stretched and were punished for this.
Ben Murphy chased a kick ahead but was disallowed a try due to grounding of the ball - a tough call.
Our counter rucking not as effective as it should be & we were turned over on a few occasions giving possession to Grasshoppers who scored two further trys in the second half helped by some poor tackling.
Notorious slow starters we had to step up in our next game.

East Kent District A 19-12 Horsham
East Kent District comprised of county level players from 7 clubs in Kent and were going to be another strong side.
We certainly upped our game and created a number of chances, with Jake Donovan & Craig Dent bursting through East Kents defensive line and Harrison Gould rampaging down the wing to cause a number of problems! Aaron Bulman was making a nuisance of himself at the breakdown disrupting play and we were well in the game. Fighting back from being 12 points down to 12-12 with one minute to go, a strange decision at the scrum & we lost possession leaving East Kent to run through a gap in our defence & score the winning try with the final play of the game. It was tough for the boys as we deserved something out of the game after clawing back the deficit.

East Kent District B 0 - 26 Horsham
With a number of teams dropping out of the tournament we were pitched up against East Kents second team in our final game and we started to play some exciting rugby, retaining possession, keeping the ball in hand & supporting our strike runners to create a number of opportunities.
There was some strong direct running by Callum Punter, Max Elliott & Ryan Maguire with Alex Harry sniping round the EK defence when close to their try line. We scored some fantastic trys with Ollie Lewis linking well in the back line to use the width of the pitch. Matt Allen burst over in the corner while handing off an EK player to score his usual one try per season!
But the best was left till last with our final try - the build up was fantastic with the ball passing through a number of players hands, support play was great, we spread the ball out wide to create a score for Callum Punter to run in under the posts.

It was a nice way to end the day - especially as it is the last game we will play as an U16 team