Great spirit & determination wins the day

At the end of last season Clifton U14s sat down and reviewed the season. One of the decisions was to play teams outside of the county (country) who the boys enjoyed playing, would stretch them both mentally and physically and provide a close game of rugby. With a squad of 20 who all got time on the field it was a good turnout plus our ball boy Hoggy who is still recovering from a non-rugby injury.

Last year there was only 1 try in it and both teams entered the game unbeaten this season. The weather on the way over was bright sunshine but as we arrived at Llanishen the Welsh rain dragon decided to dampen the Clifton spirit....

Clifton had a lot of respect for Llanishen and this showed, particularly in the first half. Llanishen opened the scoring early in the first half with some determined play. Both sides not wanting to give an inch and Clifton's try was hard fought and came from forward play and George Davey.

Clifton started to show more dominance but Llanishen would not let it count and had some strong centres who had a superb kicking game with a good chase which kept Clifton out of the Llanishen half and put Clifton under pressure which eventually lead to a well deserved try by Llanishen. Llanishen went into half time 10-5 up. The first time this season that Clifton had been trailing so they knew that they had a game to play and we had chosen the right side to play.

The sun was now out for the second half and Clifton started with passion with a superb running move from The Hamid. He managed to put the burners on and outpace a number of the opposition but was eventually caught....but superb support play by Ollie Brock, who had managed to keep up with play, lead to a try that had started from our own half. Milan converted it which meant that Clifton went into the lead for the first time.

Llanishen had a great team talk which did the trick as they fired back with 2 great tries one from their centre who had caused problems for Clifton all match. They converted one of the tries so Clifton were now having to think on their feet.

Time for the big guns and what must have been 15 pick up and goes in the corner by the Clifton forwards resulted in a try by Matty.

Shortly afterwards Sacha scored with the conversion resulting in Clifton nudging ahead. At this point Clifton would have been satisfied with a draw as both sides played well. Clifton though had one last play in them with Milan scoring just before the final whistle.

A great game played in superb spirit with both teams doing themselves proud. I think this is going to be an annual fixture...