Alton U10 at Henley Festival

So the U10 new season is in full flow! After 4 weekends of introduction to the new rules and changes from last season our first festival was up. Time to see how well all the other clubs including players, coaches and referees had adapted or understood the new rules.
As with all festivals it always takes a match or 2 to find our feet, and with awful traffic we were deprived of any warm up. So not an ideal start but our first opponents, Old Albanians, were in a similar fix they had 6 players to our 8. We played 6 six a side and with so much space sadly OA’s outscored us by 2 tries, but we had had our first taste of competitive rugby in the U10s.
The next 4 matches were tight with Alton claiming narrow wins in 2 of them versus Marlow and Reading (1-0 each), and 1-1 draws against Henley and Tadley.
The Tadley draw was particularly satisfying as they had some strong crash ball runners who were stopped and invariably driven back by some brave and technically correct tackling. At the end of what seemed a long day Alton were rewarded with a strong 5-0 win over Reading Abbey.
It was really encouraging to see contributions from everyone in the squad. The most important lesson of the day was that success in attack or defence relied on teamwork rather than individual excellence. Great effort boys!!
Alton played 6, Won 3 Drew 2 and Lost 1.