Kettering u14s hosted Spalding for our first 15 man encounter. Whilst we knew they would be a good outfit we weren't quite expecting an unbeaten Nottingham, Lincs and Derby region finalist who had made the long trip to us as they had been told we are a strong team.

Our plan to play a more development focused team therefore had to go out the window to a some extent for safety reasons and in an attempt to give them a competitive game.

It was obvious from the first 7 minutes that week rucking, missed tackles and a poor defensive setup was only going to result in one way traffic as Spalding ran in 3 converted tries

We had no option but to bolster the side with some more experienced players and rotate the development players. This quickly resulted in us competing better at the break down and causing their defence to creek as a strong run put Tommy Sims over for a try to get the Blues on the scoreboard along with the conversion. 7-21 Spalding.

We bettered them in the scrum and when we ran at them at pace we caused them lot of back peddling for long periods of time. A great break by Tom Church from the base of the scrum drew the 2 cover tacklers and James Smith was sent over in the corner for our second try. A huge conversion by Tommy Sims put us into double figures. 14-26 Spalding.

But the issue Kettering faced was we repeatedly got exposed at the breakdown which allowed Spalding quick ball to their backline in acres of space to run at us. Further poor tackling was gifting them too many break away tries from their own half.

Despite the visitors running up the score, the Blues didn't stop playing once. Even on the last play of the game we ran at Spalding putting together a superb number of phases of play, only a very marginal knock-on saved Spalding from conceding a 3rd try.

Final score Kettering 14-45 Spalding.

Whilst Spalding were out and out winners on the day, their coaches commented that we were one of the toughest teams they'd played and showed no signs of giving up and kept coming at them. It was evident we had huge team spirit.

Despite the loss, the Blues had some standout performances, not least from Tommy Sims whose kicking was outstanding both from hand and from the conversion tee. Had we not gifted them a 21 point lead I suspect the score line would have been a lot closer.

Key lessons learnt -

Tackle low - not high
Get to and compete at the breakdown at pace
Keep playing, don't let your heads go down and take it to them!

We excelled at the later now let's sort the other 2.