Another Tour Win for Kettering Under 10s

With bleary eyes and sore heads (the adults at least!) Kettering Under 10s presented themselves at Weymouth RFC emblazoned in their Hawaiian shirts and ready for the matches ahead against Weymouth Under 10s.

Indeed all of the team were happy that the fixture was closer to the holiday camp than the match the day before, particularly because the clocks had gone forward and therefore sleep deprivation was clearly a performance risk amongst the boys.

Therefore after a rousing rendition of Hawaii Five '0' that cleared the cobwebs away, the boys put their party shirts back in their kit bags and got down to the business of playing to win.

Unfortunately however the combination of the late night the previous evening and the cold wind blowing across the pitch, caused the boys to make a series of handling errors that risked them messing up their unbeaten tour record as they had done on last year's tour. In fact Mr Tilley, who had by now found his whistle, ended up blowing it more times in the first 20 minutes of the fixture than he had for much of the whole of the previous five matches.

Fortunately Weymouth weren't able to capitalise on these mistakes and very soon the boys got their act together and started to play some exciting rugby again. It was particularly pleasing to see the quality of their passing and positional play that ultimately resulted in them scoring a number of tries in the corners of the opposition's in-goal area.

The final results in the three games played against Weymouth were 2-0, 3-0 and 3-1 with Zac Byers, Rory Ward and Ben York adding to their try tally from the previous matches against Ivel Barbarians the day before. Additionally tries were also scored by Mackenzie Colson, Joel Woolley, Kean McCabe and Gabe Chaine.

On top of these matches the boys were also given the opportunity to play against Kettering Under 11s in a hastily arranged match between the two teams. Although ultimately the Under 11s beat the boys 3-0 it was very promising to see how they managed with the five-man scrum for the first time and also how they coped with the challenges of an older and much more experienced team. It's exciting to see that with the new season not too far away our boys are clearly up for the test that the Under 11s format will bring them.

In terms of Men of the Matches over the two days of the Easter tour the awards went to Zac Byers, Rory Ward, Stanley Kirk and Gabe Chaine.

It was particularly pleasing to see Gabe achieve this award because, after several years of loyal service to the club, he and his family will soon be returning to live in the USA. We send them our very best wishes and hope that they retain fond memories of their time with Kettering RFC for many years to come. We also hope that they have room in their new home in Hawaii for a group of 30+ boys as well as coaches, parents and assorted others who are already planning on joining them next year on the beaches of Oahu, Kauai and Maui for Easter Tour 2014 - at least it should be warmer than Weymouth 2013!