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Aldermaston mustered our meager resources for the away match to Reading. Mr Harris re-shuffled the 14 players we had, and I begged and borrowed a winger from Reading (Archie) to make the 15th man. And so it began....
After last season’s narrow league match victory - at U13’s – we knew today would be a close affair between the Lions and Reading. It took Reading 7 minutes to get on the board with a well worked try – it wasn’t that Aldermaston weren’t awake, it was down to Reading making the most of the breakdown ball and being that little bit sharper to recover the ball during rucks, 5-0 to Reading.  The match was already proving to be very even, the first true B team match we have played in this season. Aldermaston straightened themselves up and got back down to business, with some good drives from the forwards combined with the backs seeing the ball and moving it fairly freely. A few handling errors crept in and some minor lapses of judgement were made, but after a sustained period of Aldermaston aggression and gained territory, Jamie managed to break through with a powerful run towards the left corner flag. Despite a good attempt by Dan, we couldn’t capitalise on the extra 2 points. We continued to battle making great territory and were unlucky to not get a 2nd try before half time – our efforts - well held up by Reading on the touchline after a scrum, 5-5 at half time. The half time team talk included some discussion about handling errors, decision making in the backs and forwards control of the scrums, rucks and the line-out, but it was in the main positive. Reading had the luxury of some substitutions to replace tired legs, unfortunately we didn’t – but the lads sucked it up and battled on despite some knocks. Some great end to end rugby followed the half time break – it was great to see both sides kicking freely, moving the ball confidently between the forwards and backs and also executing some great technical work - mauling and rucking. Dan was outstanding, making some great restart kicks, he also found touch when we were under pressure. The tackling on both sides was good, I have to single out a couple of Aldermaston players for making some immense tackles: Ned – back as scrum half – was brave against some of the large forwards, Joe hit a couple of the Reading guys hard on more than one occasion, Jamie and Sam both made a few try saving tackles in the centre when Reading had managed to power through the forwards. Gregg P on the wing wrapped up a couple of the big Reading guys and managed to snaffle the ball a couple of times. Tom and Kristian put in a fantastic amount of work, made some good tackles and helped link the forwards and backs, considering they were out of position, they played really well.  Time flew by, I can’t actually remember whether we scored first after the restart or Reading scored first! It was so close, but Gregg A managed to capitalise on some good forwards work by Joe, Cameron, Jacob and Jack, pushing through the Reading line and scoring on the right; 10-10 with about 15 minutes to go. We needed to get back into Readings half to get back into a winning position; Rhys was the man for the job, taking the whole Reading team on off the back of the scrum – he made some outstanding territory gains and battled with all his strength to push through. The forwards were finding it hard to keep up and support Rhys’s runs, so it didn’t result in a score. Reading had already found our Achilles heal, they put a couple of long kicks and channeled their attack onto our right wing, quickly gaining back any territory Aldermaston had won. Bradley, for an U13 playing up, was once again sharp as our full back – cool under some high kicks, expertly gathering up lose balls. Somewhere in this mayhem, Reading broke free and powered down the right to score again on the right wing, 15-10. We were in the last 10 minutes and the lads knew it. Once again Joe, Jack, Jacob, Cameron and Gregg A made some great territory, we were basically camped on the Reading 10 meter line for the last 3 minutes. There was some great combination's between the centres, locks and flankers, slick passing and interplay that deserved a score, but we just couldn’t capitalise on the possession – Reading managed to repel every attack. Chris called it white line fever in the last minutes, the forwards were pushing and fighting to get the ball over the line, but not seeing the backs chomping at the bit in acres of space. In the end the clock beat us, 15-10 at the final whistle, but both sides agreed it was a fantastic game. Many thanks go to Reading for sportingly loaning us a winger and to Russ for refereeing in borrowed Reading kit. For a scratch team, with 6 players absent and 6 guys playing out of position, it was a great performance, despite the narrow defeat. The improvements and confidence exhibited by our players made it hard to choose a man of the match; even though Chris and Myself were both on opposite touchlines, when we got together, we agreed that our MOTM was Bradley – our U13 full back – immense under the high ball, cool under pressure, taking the ball straight back into contact with Reading - on more than one occasion, he could be found under a sea of Reading players - brave as a Lion against opposition twice his size! More match photo's here: http://www.aldermastonrugby.com/index.php?option=com_rsgallery2&page=slideshow&gid=73&Itemid=57 Well done again lads; as we said at the start of the match – give me and Chris a reason to keep turning up to coach and help develop you each week and we will. You did that in spades today, so keep up the good work – see you at training. Scorers: Jamie (1 try) Gregg A (1 try) MOTM: Bradley |
Youth Rugby 
