Sunday 17th September saw Carlisle Rugby Club's Under 16’s set off for the Under 16’s Festival at Percy Park along with 5 of the Under 15’s who stepped up. They were to play round robin matches with North East teams from Pontepeth (Ponteland/Morpeth combined), Northern, Percy Park, Novos, Tynedale, Rockcliffe and Alnwick.

Carlisle travelled with only 17 players and were scheduled to play a minimum of three 20 minute games.

The first match was played against Rockliffe and saw a resounding 14-7 win for Carlisle. After a slow start the first try went to Rockliffe followed by a conversion. With only a few minutes to go Carlisle's Dan Laval successfully scored the first try with Harry Hetherington converting it to take us equal. In the last dying seconds of the game Euan Forlow earned our second try with Harry Hetherington taking us ahead with his conversion for the winning score of 14-7!

The second game was against Pontepreth with Olli Burns and Harry Hetherington straight away taking us into the lead with Olli scoring a try and Harry kicking the conversion. Less than 12 minutes later Euan Noble, try scorer, and Harry Hetherington took us forward with another try and conversion, in the last 5 mins Pontepreth tried to take our success and won a try and conversion but not in time to win the game and Carlisle walked away with another 14-7 triumphant win!

Third and final game was against Novos, a hard game against a strong side and the Novos took a try in the first minute and a conversion to take the lead. The Carlisle lads fought hard but a well drilled Novos team were more desperate for the win after losing a previous game and took another try in the 14th minute but didn’t manage the conversion so even with a few very close calls from Carlisle fighting hard to gain points Carlisle took a 0-12 defeat. The lads took a few knocks in this game and with only 2 subs they worked hard!

Saying that though - with an injury depleted team Carlisle made it to the final on points scored and played against Percy Park for the 'Paul Van Zan Trophy’. With no subs the team tried hard to make headway but in this instance Percy Park were the stronger team winning a try at 3 minute, 7 minute, 11 minute intervals and the final seconds following through with only 3 conversions. This left Carlisle a defeat of 0-19.

Team Players:
Callum Steele
Dan Laval
Ethan Thompson
Euan Forlow
Euan Noble
Finlay McCartney
Harry Hetherington
Harry Reid
Louis Graham
Morgan Kasiera
Nathanial Mossop
Oliver Burns
Paul Harrison
Richard Garbarino-Danson
Roray Ward
Seamus Edwards
William Forbes

Report by The Under 16’s Supporters.