17 March 2017
The U13s travelled to the Berkhamsted 7s Tournament on the back of a good performance at the Caldicott 7s. They were looking forward to playing different teams from their normal 13 a side circuit. In all, the tournament had 63 teams from all over the country playing on the day.
The team contained three 1st years, which is testament to the performances they had put in at the previous tournament. The weather wasn’t quite what was hoped for and made free flowing rugby difficult but the boys coped well.
First up were the group stages, playing three matches against Llangatwg Community School (Won 30-10), St Benedict’s School, Ealing (Lost 10-15) and finally Skinners’ School (Lost 10-30). The boys performed well across the group stage and were unlucky not to have secured the win against St Benedict’s.
With the new RFU format being a 'waterfall' structure, this put our boys into a further group stage in the afternoon playing in the Bowl Tournament. Unfortunately one of the teams had pulled out by this stage and so there were only two matches left. These matches were against Wetherby Prep School (Drew 20-20) and Barry Comprehensive School (Drew 15-15). Again there was a feeling the boys were extremely unlucky not to have won both of these games.
All in all the boys played some fantastic rugby and stuck to the task of trying to play a fast, high tempo, offloading game despite the difficult conditions. Callum Aiken, a 1st year, was thoroughly deserving of being named Player of the Tournament for Abingdon.
A big thank you must be made to all the parents who came along and braved the weather and cheered on the team.
