Casuals were a strong team to play against, they had a pacey backline with great tacklers in the forwards. However, Kettering came out with a win. We stopped many runs and carries from the other team. We applied pressure to every man receiving the ball. George was outstanding with the hand-offs and a slippery player to try and tackle. Also a great carry today was by Hamzah, he showed great speed along the line beating many players, the team showed great chemistry and set up the start of play finding space.

Simon in the rucks was showing the strength of a forward, putting in a fight for the ball. Dylan showed great play while being in the forwards as he was out of his comfort zone but stepped up to the challenge. A great asset to the team is Lewis, he has a lot of energy and strength, he scored a great try and showed the casuals how it is done, also he has a great personality. Another advantage of this match would be the passing and tackling, everyone showed great pride tackling, John was in there ready to push an opposing player back, he shows no fear in tackling and even with a knock he gets up and carries on.

As we were a man down we were given a Casual’s player, Steven, although he was not a blue the team was happy to have him and it was like he was one of our own. He made runs and passes. Dan made an excellent run trying to catch a very quick player. He never gave up and although he could not prevent the try he kept going.

Although we ended with the win we have some improvements needed. We could have out rucked them but we were pushed back as we felt we had won the ruck, also we lost a lot of ball as we were tackled. Quick passes were not executed properly and it seemed we rushed too much, also we showed a lack use of the unders and overs call. Blocker could also be used more

Overall the game was a great one, it goes to show that even with injuries in our team, that didn’t faze us, we showed what the Kettering Bues U14 are made of !

Report by Rory Fenton