Southend & Tring

With the first festivals of the season under way all the boys played a part in festivals last weekend.

Ray’s team travelled to Southend (minus Ray), no time for fish & chips as we had some big teams to play against. With Saffron Warden A’s, Chelmsford ‘giants’ and Colchester ‘squadies’ in the qualifying round it was a tough pool to be in. Having passed that test Stortford faced OA’s in the next round. Personally I tipped OA’s to win the whole tournament, the boys put in a fantastic performance only to loose 2 try’s to nil. That put Stortford into the ‘Vase Final’ to face tournament holders Southend. It was a long day and both teams were tiring. Luckily having 18 players sometimes has its positives with regular fresh legs. With try’s from Thomas Pugh and Michael Stevens we took the first silverware of the year. A great team effort with every boy making every tackle count. It was hard to choose a player of the day with some players not seeing as much action but all the same playing their part. I will have to split it between Nathan who’s work rate in tackling out did everybody on both teams in all the games and Louis who played scrum half and had the better of every scrum half who played against him.
Well done to all the boys and I am looking forward to OA’s festival in two weeks time.

Adrian Watson

Meanwhile Gary’s team travelled to Tring (with Ray), this was a festival of two halves…. As usual we started off slowly and lost the first two games quite convincingly, the first was against Chinnor (6-0) the second against Tring (4-0). The only player who seemed to be making his tackles was Will Price. After a long chat from Gary all of the lads held their heads high and prepared for the third game against Camelot. Unfortunately during this interval a very nasty accident happened and whilst keeping warm Will managed to break his collar bone. That will be the end of his season as he can do nothing now for 8 weeks! For his great work during the first two games I’d like to nominate Will as player of the week. Riku also had a great day and I’d like to say a big thank you to him for stepping into the hookers role, (the first time he has played here), due to injuries and substitutions.

Then came the second half, the lads started well against Camelot and finally ran through winners (2-1), with great tries from Freddie and Ryan and some very disciplined work from the forwards, maintaining pressure and the ball for long periods within yards of the Camelot try line. Buoyed by this the lads took on Cheshunt, this was much tougher than our last encounter, when we won very convincingly. Stortford finally won (2-1) with tries from Cameron and Sam. The final pool game was against Harpenden after a 90 minute break. We all wondered which one of our teams was going to come out. Harpenden ran 2 tries in during the first minute, but the lads held in there to draw the game 1 each after that, finally loosing out 3-1. This was a great performance as all the lads pulled together and made sure that their heads didn’t go down. Harry Collins made a great run to score the only try for us here, but all the lads performed wonderfully with Jack P and Cameron making some great charges up the pitch. All in all it was a great day for us, but due to our poor start, (although against the 2 best sides in our pool) we ended up 4th in the group and did not get the chance to emulate Ray’s side and challenge for some silverware.
Well done to all the boys and I am looking forward to Richmond festival next week.

All the lads must be reminded that this is a physical sport and that accidents do happen, however they must take responsibility for their actions and ensure that if anything physical is going on they must seek some supervision. We all wish Will the speediest of recoveries and will miss him a lot in forthcoming fixtures.

Tom Pettet