Success on the road for the Under 16's

Newport Salop 19 Crewe and Nantwich 38.

Months have passed by since our last outing against Macclesfield, tours have been enjoyed, holidays have been taken, 1000's of Xbox hours have been accrued, and the boys have all grown in height again.

The first game of the season is always a tricky one; one that can really only act as starting point for what is to come; what you need to work on; where are your strengths; and has the team progressed from the end of the season before?

The team have worked really hard at training, with the addition of 2 new coaches working on technical forwardy stuff, and the backs working separately on what's the best hair wax and do blue boots clash with the black and white kit? The coaching team were hoping it would all come together in sunny Shropshire.

What the first 9 minutes showed us was, we can defend, as we didn't touch the ball once. Newport threw wave after wave at us, but the team stood firm, communicated well and knocked Newport back on more than on occasion. Once we did get hold of the ball, what we have seen in training, transferred to the pitch seamlessly. Scrum ball won, decent backs move, forward runners, till eventually space presented its self in front of Logan, who dummied his way through 3 players, then offloaded to Jacob on a instinctive support line to score under the posts. Logan popped over the conversion to take a 7 - 0 lead - totally against the run of play.

From the restart, Newport continued to hog possession and made good ground towards our 22; we have worked on when, and when not to contest the ball in rucks. Joe picked his moment perfectly to gain a well deserved penalty from the resulting lineout; Logan broke down the blind side, kicking and chasing, putting the Newport fullback under pressure, gaining a 5 mtr lineout for Crewe. Great drills to catch and drive resulted in our newest import from South Wales Harley go over for a try on debut. Logan knocked over the conversion from near the touchline to extend our lead.

From the kick off, Jacob got the ball deep in his own half, took on the defence, chipped ahead, collected the ball on the bounce and ran in under the posts untouched - Logan converted to make score 21 - 0

Newport were always in the game, but were coming up against a defence that was working hard for each other, Ellis, Alfie and Pete were all making tackle after tackle, and Max was being a general pain in the proverbial. The problem Newport had, is when we eventually got the ball ,we looked really dangerous. The next try came from a great step and 60mtr run from Jarrad,who got pulled down just short of the line,but as ever, Jacob was on hand to collect the offload and score a first half hattrick.Logan dually converted taking us to half time 28 - 0 up.

The second half started much the same as the first, with Newport having a lot of the ball, the difference this half was we started to drop off tackles and lost yards over and over, Newport scored almost immediately. They quickly repeated the trick as we started to look a bit ragged. We were now struggling to get our hands on the ball and when we did, we made a few errors putting us under serious pressure. Newport scored again 15 minutes into the second half getting within 10 points.

From the kick off, we retained the ball and kept hold of it; all the forwards upped the effort: Tommy, Ellis, James and Max all really got stuck in, giving the backs a better platform than the previous 20 minutes. After multiple phases and great ball retention, the ball got moved wide, with Jarrad giving a lovely pass to Drew, who stepped his opposing winger, to score his second try in 2 games.

We scored again late in the game with the fastest second row in the west: Dan, galloping down the wing before looping a pass inside to Logan to score.

An excellent morning of rugby against strong opposition; things to work on, but a huge amount of positives.

Many thanks to Newport Salop RUFC for the game and hospitality, I hope the return later in the season is as entertaining.

Try Scorers - Jacob x 3, Harley x 1, Drew x 1, Logan x 1
Conversions - Logan x 4