A show of mental strength at Hammersmith

The last days of an Indian summer saw a trip back to the minis days of festivals with a great day of rugby at Hammersmith. A high class group of teams from southwest London, and a blast through of 20 minute matches. A good group of boys made the trip (thanks again for all the help with rides etc) and after a good warmup were ready to get some good hard track rugby in.

We started taking on Rosslyn Park, a storied club that we played in our league finals last year. The boys started really sharply with two great tries through the hands to the right, stressing the defence and moving the ball well. RP came back hard to score twice before the half, running through some looser tackles to score twice and go into the half even. The second half saw more good play, with the defence tightening up on both sides. The boys came up with one try on a powerful run to sneak the match.

The second match after a quick turnaround was against the hosts, Hammersmith. They had a good team and took an early lead with a couple of tries after a bit of sloppiness on our side and losing some turnover ball at the rucks. The temperature then started to rise, with a few borderline tackles coming in from Hammers and a relatively relaxed view of reffing the ruck letting Hammers get another couple of tries. The boys kept their cool though (probably better than the sidelines) and almost got a couple of tries back, though couldn’t quite get across (some pretty strong belief that at least one was a penalty try).

The final match was against wasps- another quick turnaround for a slightly battered team. The boys started out slightly shell shocked, conceding a few tries early on with a combination of a bit of bad luck on a fly hack through and some of their powerful runners causing real problems for us, with the half time score seeing the boys well back. The mental reaction in the second half was phenomenal though - started working harder, moved the ball to score at the wings, and added a few more. Probably didn’t quite get back, though real debate about that. The important piece, however was that they clearly won the second half, kept fighting, and now have something to take in to the next round of games. All in all, a great day of rugby despite the emotional rollercoaster- and a learning experience for them all.