clifton v longlevens

Clifton under-13s won this crucial Gloucester Cup match against Longevens 27-10, keeping alive our hopes of progressing out of the group stage and into the quarter-finals.

We played the first-half into a fierce wind but despite this we scored two of our best tries of the season so far.

There was an outstanding solo try from centre Sam Read, who ran a superb line onto a short pass, seared through the Longlevens midfield defence and accelerated past the full-back to dot down under the posts.

The other was a 15-man wonderful thing to behold. Quick ball from a great ruck by our pack on the opposition 22 was then handled all the way down a perfectly formed backline to create an overlap for Olly to score wide out. You couldn't ask for more. Hopefully we can recreate one of those in the games still to come.

We turned around 15-5 in the lead and with the wind behind us we might have hoped to score more than the two tries we racked up in the second half. But we were up against a dogged side who sucked us in to a forwards battle that dominated the final 25 minutes. Our pack did a manful job in the many mauls and rucks but we struggled to get the ball away to the backs.

However, Sam completed a hat-trick while our final try came from a dazzling new move created by fly-half Hugo. A chip from 5 yards out sees the ball bounce twice on the crossbar and land in the in-goal area - and on this occasion Herbie pounced gratefully onto the ball.

Overall an excellent win against very strong opposition in difficult conditions. There is always room for improvement and one thing we must focus on is our discipline, both in terms of our play and attitude to the referee.

Finally thanks to the referee and we apologise for any backchat that you had to endure from Clifton towards the end of the game, which was otherwise played in a good spirit between the two teams.