After a good opening day tournament at Whitely Bay where the boys managed 3 wins from 3 games we went across to Novo’s last Sunday fully expecting to emulate our good form from the Whitely Bay tournament…….however Novo’s proved to be a much stiffer and robust opponent than we usually encounter and we had our eyes firmly opened in understanding where we as a squad should be aiming for week in week out!

We only had a squad of 18 travelling to Novo’s and whilst it wasn’t too much of an early start I think many of the boys were caught sleeping for the entire first half! Within the opening 10 minutes we were 17-0 down and never look likely of threatening the Novo’s very high defence line! We tried to go back to basics but with missed tackles and less tempo the half finished 27-0! Not a position we’re used to.

With the downhill in our favour we started the second half much brighter and with some good team work we were camped in the Novo’s half for the first 15 minutes of the second period but either a knock on or good defensive work meant we couldn’t breach the Novo’s line!!! And actually it was Novo’s who scored the next try from a last ditch clearing kick to make it 32-0, we knew at that point it wasn’t our day and then to add insult to injury a wheeled scrum that no-one is sure how the referee missed presented Novo’s with the chance to score yet another try after we’d been building on good momentum in the final stages of the game!

Our time did eventually come within the last 10 minutes or so when we actually showed glimpses of our actual ability with good strong carries from our big forwards in Nathaniel, then Luca who gained nearly 15 metres and then Alfie helped create the space and ball the backs had been deprived of for much of the day but it meant we could give Ozzie the ball in space and he finished a well worked try!

Difficult for us Coaches to watch such a game but sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and admitted we were beaten by the better team on the day! Plus it make us even more determined to try and get more games like this week in week out!

Percy Park for us this week….

Report by David Longworth