CLIFTON V WINSCOMBE

At the end of the game one of the Winscombe coaches gathered our boys around and gave them a little speech. He told them how well they had performed and that it had been a pleasure to watch the style of rugby that they had played.

It speaks volumes for the classy rugby guys that the Winscombe coaches are, as much as for how well we really did play.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that that was as good a 50 minutes as we have yet put together, especially given that over the years we have rarely had success against Winscombe.

Our backs handled the ball superbly in what were perfect conditions for running rugby, executing the game plan with pace, power and precision. The forwards joined the party as well, linking up with the backs with some outstanding handling.

One try summed up the day with a succession of passes and quick rucks involving what seemed like the whole team, being finished off by winger Olly. It would have been worthy of a training film, as one coach suggested.

Defence was excellent, too, not conceding any points for the second week running. The pleasing thing was that this was not just down to good tackling, but to good organisation and pressure as well.

So, the stats: we won 57-0. We scored four tries in the first half and five in the second with six successful conversions from Archie and Hugo.

Try scorers included Sam Read, Riley, Herbie (interception) and Archie – whose interplay with Callum down the wing from a kick-off led to a great score.

The big challenge now is to keep our feet on the ground as there are some very tricky cup games ahead and unfortunately we are likely to be missing players in the coming weeks. But that presents opportunities for other players in our squad and we hope they can step up and seize their chance.

There is much hard work to be done to keep improving. One area where we made mistakes was in contact, losing the ball forward on a few occasions. Also, we occasionally kept the ball in tight areas when we should have spread it wide to take advantage of overlaps.

However, we should enjoy this win and take forward the confidence gained into the next match against Hucclecote – who ominously beat county champions Tetbury convincingly at the weekend.

As for man of the match, there were many contenders and it could probably be shared by the whole squad. But there were notable performances by Owen who came on to the wing in the second half, Dougie who showed power and mobility all around the pitch and Sam Sproule (this is Hamish writing this not dad Nick!) for pinning the backline together with his all round game.

But we decided that for his bullocking runs and unbelievable off-loads the award goes to Riley.