Southwold Rugby U13s

Southwold Colts 46 – 12 Stowmarket Colts

Another glorious day on the Common – that’s if you like gale force winds!

Stowmarket arrived with 12 players due to several last minute cry-offs. So Southwold duly leant them two locks and a flanker in order to facilitate a proper match.

Southwold Colts elected to play in to the wind and found themselves under immediate pressure in their 22, before Jobe Brooks picked up a pass and broke several tackles before running 80 metres for the first try. Stowmarket came back five minutes later with an unconverted try of their own.

Southwold then began to look more dominant and after some impressive passages of play from the forwards, prop Hugo Wells-Baker ran in a well deserved try in the corner. Southwold continued to work well off the ball providing the playmakers with loads of options but Stowmarket’s midfield defence was pretty solid thwarting numerous promising breaks from centre Matt Sutton. An exciting passage of play with numerous saw the other centre, Jack Frere-Smith, run in an equally well deserved try in the corner.

More crash balls up the middle tied in the Stowmarket midfield and eventually a three man overlap presented itself 10m out from their line. The Southwold backs unselfishly shipped it out for Ryan Shipley on the wing to run in the team’s fourth. That wasn’t quite it for the first half as more pressure in their 22 saw yet another powerful break from Jobe Brooks who drew the last defender to put scrum-half Sam Puxley in under the posts.

The score at half time was 29-5.

Southwold were relieved to have the wind behind them in the 2nd half and expected to run away with it. Stowmarket had other ideas. Now with three new Southwold players in their ranks, they came straight out of the blocks from the restart with a fine try.

Southwold had lost a bit of structure in the 2nd half and there were too many unsupported runs with a few being turned over. However, Jake Loader and Harry Forward-Friend managed several turn-overs themselves to compensate. Southwold’s fly-half, Ben Felton, then scored two almost identical tries – each time receiving the ball just inside Stowmarket’s 10m line, dummying the first line of defence and stepping the full back.

The game was rounded off by 2nd rower, James Gerrish, powering over the line after another series of great passes and offloads to score Southwold’s eigth.

The match was played in great spirit throughout and all credit goes to Stowmarket for not once dropping their heads and competing right up to the final whistle.

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