Old Cats Under 13 v Richmond

Old Cats boys made the long way up to Richmond. One of South West London’s most established clubs, but still a well kept secret for the Sat Navs!

It has been 6 long weeks since the boys last played together due to Christmas & the rain gods with water logged pitches. A lot of time has passed together with chocolate Celebrations and Christmas puds. Unfortunately it showed. Pre match warm up time was limited and the team were clearly struggling as a number of people had to play new positions. At kick off Old Cats could not get any form of possession. They were too slow to close down Richmond. The backs struggled to come up as a unit quickly which then allowed Richmond to pass through the hands out wide.

On the plus side though, the forwards were totally dominate in the scrum, constantly pushing Richmond back and if it was not for Richmond’s quick thinking scrum half, we would of turned over the ball a lot more times. As the game progressed, so did Old Cats game plan. There were sustained periods of where Old Cats built up phases and applied the pressure to Richmond, but it did come too late when the game had already been lost.

This was a fine example of players eager to play well and put in really good individual performances, but the lesson learnt is that it comes to nothing, if you are not playing well as a team. Some of the individuals that need to be noted are:

Alex D – Like a Bull in a field seeing 15 red shirts in front of him. Making some great charges and mowing down Richmond bodies. (Lucky I was not wearing red)!

Dan – He was the man with his mojo back, with excellent try saving tackles at full charge.

Lawrence – Great tackles and positioning work, making life difficult for Richmond all over the field.

Josh D – Man of the match performance playing in a new position as full back, which is took to like a duck to water. He had great positioning work and made a number of try saving tackles. He had to come off in the second half with a hamstring pull, but not before he was our man of the match.