U9 tour to Weymouth Festival 2015

The Horsham RUFC under-9 team ended a very successful season by winning the prestigious Weymouth Rugby Festival for the second year running having won the under-8 event in 2014.

A total of 72 teams from southern England took part in the mini rugby festival, running from under-7 through to under-12. The under-9 event consisted of two groups of nine teams and Horsham entered three teams: the Lions, Tigers and Pumas.

Horsham Lions

The Horsham A Team as the Lions won eight of their group games with one closely contested draw with a good Dorking team. In their eight matches they ran in many tries and had a great defence, tackling brilliantly. Their ball handling and passing had many fellow coaches passing on favourable comments to the Horsham coaches.

Having qualified for the final, the Lions played Battersea Crusaders who were full of strong runners. Horsham seized the initiative from the start with aggressive defence sending Battersea backwards and when opportunities arose they scored tries at regular intervals. The tries came mainly through team captain Morgan Purnell who kept his best game until last and led from the front. The final result was 6-0 and Horsham proved to be worthy winners of the competition.

The Lions squad consisted of Harry Bostock, Daniel Brand, Sam Gordon, Liam Hughes, James ‘dark’ Knight, Morgan Purnell (capt), Tom Sanders and Sam Thurston.

Horsham Pumas

Horsham Pumas made a scarily slow start, going 2-0 down straight away in their opening match on Saturday. Half time came and the boys were 4-2 down. The second half proved to be a changing point for the Pumas as they came through to win 5-4.

This seemed to pump the boys up more and as the day wore on they got better and stronger. Unfortunately they stepped up too much and there were some very tired legs out on the pitch as the team took their first defeat of the festival, going down 6-0 on the last game of the day to Battersea Crusaders, who turned out to be the eventual winners of the pool.

Sunday proved to be another great day as the team were unbeaten all day, ending up winning four, drawing three with only one loss over both the days.

The Pumas squad was made up of James Andrews, Sam Broom, Nathan Coward (capt), Jolyon Crook, James ‘light’ Knight, Finlay Rutherford, Mason Taylor (vice capt) and Rubén Weide. Nathan was awarded the Pumas player of the tournament for a fantastic strong display of running and heavy tackling.

Horsham Tigers

The Tigers team also competed strongly but just came out on the losing side more often than not during a series of tight matches. A final record of won two, lost six doesn't do justice to the quality of rugby the team played. Seven out of the eight matches were decided by one or two tries with only a 6-2 loss against eventual runners-up Battersea Crusaders breaking the sequence.

The Tigers squad consisted of Finlay Conway, Jude Harding, Kye Hill, Benjamin Mason, Rhys Merola, Freddie Muggeridge, George Rimer and Aaron West. Aaron was awarded the Tigers player of the tournament for stepping up his game with strong tackling and running.

Every Horsham player put in 110% during the festival and made the coaches and parents very happy with great tackling, running and passing.

A fantastic weekend was had by all.