Fullerians v Ealing Trailfinders Academy U18 won 19 – 10
An Ealing Trailfinders Academy U18 squad of 27 players arrived at Fullerians on a slightly cooler and wetter day than we have been used to recently and after a very productive pre-season the rugby season and the first match had finally arrived.
Fullerians were on the front foot from the kick off and after a string of early mistakes by Ealing they took the lead after only two minutes. 5 – 0.
After that Ealing started to find their feet but the mistake count remained high. This meant that any good progress we made was nullified by a keen and quicker Fullerians side who continued to benefit from our mistakes, gaining back valuable ground that we had worked hard to take.
That remained the pattern for the rest of the session and although Ealing were working hard, nothing seemed to be clicking. However, you always had the feeling that if it did then we would start to run away with things.
With so many players to get game time we started the second period with only three players playing from period one and in the same position. This potentially could have been disruptive and our accuracy and intensity could have worsened.
None of it. Immediately we were a different team. All the half time talk of intensity, accuracy, space etc was now coming into our game. Running lines into space and off loads were now sticking. This was what we had been waiting for.
It only took one minute to score our first try and from then we were completely dominant. Attacking from all areas of the pitch, hitting space, off loading and intensity all combined to see us score another two trys in this period.
This is where the number of players did start to disrupt us a little. Another massive change in personnel saw us just step off the gas a little. Saying that our scrum had been solid all day and continued to be effective. Our defensive work was good with one passage of great attacking play by Fullerians right on our line, we managed to hold them out and finally clear our lines. The lineout continued to function so at the end lots of positives to takes away. The score in this session was 0 – 0 right up to the last minute when Fullerians just managed to work an overlap wide and score with thirty seconds to go. 5 – 0.
All in all a good day. Always good to get the first one out of the way and especially with a win.
Some great individual performances with some players playing out of position. Many thanks to those guys and well done to you.
A lot of good team play, just need a little more accuracy and consistency but that will come.
Squad
Steadman, Walker, Samms, Day, Kozyritskiy, Luk, Tom Bassett, Wells, Hitchcock, Nash, Cox, Wake, Avis, McCormack, Lowe, Shahabi, Clark, Davids, Hawkins, Czop, March, Beaumont, Beavis, Bush, Jones, Barton, Higgins.
