U9s Vs Southwell 10.03.24

Nottingham Casuals and both fielded two teams for today’s matches. Wet weather again met the players and made for great conditions to get muddy and play some great rugby.
“Did you see England’s first try yesterday?” came the call from the coaches. “Yeah, they kept passing” was the reply. “Well, that’s what we want you to do today; pass the ball wide and run forward”. Sounds simple!

Casuals Team 1 were on it and started really well. Smooth passing and offloads at contact to work the ball away from the Southwell defence worked time and again to gain territory and score resulting tries.

Adam nominated himself as scrum half, followed the ball and fed Sery and Horatio to run wide into space for beautifully worked tries. William also took advantage of the space created; leaving the defenders dizzy, guessing which way he was going as he dropped his shoulders sprinting to the line.

Last ditch defending metres from Casuals try line from Rory, Wilf and Jhett showed the other side of our game; determination and effort, which was in abundance today. Bodies were on the line as Horatio took two massive hits whilst tackling. He got up and shook himself down, hunting for more tackles to make.

Casuals Team 2 displayed maximum effort all round. Strong tackles from Thomas, Freddie and Olly bringing Southwell to ground and making them work really hard for the tries that they did manage to score.
Every ball was hard fought for, with the team working hard to gain possession when in defence. They were able to keep the ball really well when going forward, with solid passing and quick recycling of the ball at the tackle.
Really good movement of the ball from the restarts, notable passes from Olly and Hedley, making use of the space available and putting their teammates into try scoring positions.

Some excellent solo long runs ending in tries from Harry, Thomas and Ben.

Overall superb performance from everybody, making more direct forward runs and working brilliantly as a team to put down a bucketful of tries.

Champagne moment of the day belonged to Wilfred, who ran from a turnover on his own try line to evade multiple tackle attempts and power through for a try. This capped a great day for Wilfred, who won Player of the Week.