A tight battle with Barnet

Spectacularly lucky with the weather for once, the Heath pitches being as good as possible in January, the Hampstead u13s welcomed Barnet down the A1. The opposition was a big physical team, and definitely a little intimidating looking across, but the boys warmed up well, with a particular focus on hitting rucks low and hard in addition to our normal passing game. A little cockiness had possibly crept in after recent results, but this was definitely going to be a bit of a wake-up call.

The boys started with some good pressure and a quick pass to one of the strike runners saw Hampstead score first; from there, however, the game tightened up a lot. There was a lot of territorial pressure, but the ball wasn’t quite sticking in the hands, and a few near things not quite coming off meant that there wasn’t much in it. The boys were making good tackles, and the breakdown was coming along as a real positive, but it was still tighter than we would have liked. Just before the half, the boys managed to fight over for one more to add a little breathing space, though took some brave tackles near the end to keep it there.

The second half was even more of a battle: Barnet had clearly upped the intensity, both carrying and hitting harder. The boys absorbed it well, at the cost of a number of injuries, and were still pretty well on top, even managing to add a couple of tries. This was especially helped by a dominant performance by the forwards in the scrum, who gave a great platform and even stole some against the head, and some of our best team-wide rucking of the season in the second half. Barnet did manage to score twice, breaking through a few tackles with their size, but the boys managed to keep it in a place where had margin for error, and if anything had better chances at the end.

Overall was very happy with the performance and the effort, a much tighter battle. And appreciate the tolerance as tried to get as many players as possible onto the pitch - was definitely harder than some other matches to manage. Hope our walking wounded feel better soon.

Author: Andrew Honan (U13 Coach)