The Skolars Minis were on fine form last Saturday at Elmbridge’s Primary RL Festival.
After a long trip down to Claygate, to the home of Elmbridge Eagles, a strong London Skolars contingent arrived full of enthusiasm for their first Festival of the 2016 season.
Fielding teams at U11’s and at U9’s there was a good mix of new and experienced players, the Skolars were hopeful of a positive start and their first game against Medway saw them surge into a lead. There was some great handling and use of space, however the young Skolars lacked some defensive cohesion against what was a big Medway team and let them back into the game in the dying minutes which saw the match end up a draw.
Next up came an encounter with the home-side Elmbridge. Again good handling around the re-starts, and using the 6 tackles effectively meant our littlest Skolars dominated the game and ran out clear winners against an enthusiastic Elmbridge side.
Last up was local rival’s Hemel Stags which produced a typically hard-fought, bruising encounter, it came down to the final few minutes, with the Skolars producing a fantastic final minute play to score a match-winning try.
Overall our youngest Skolars finished the day undefeated and with 2 wins under their belt. Head Coach of the U11’s Dave Roberts and Head Coach of the U9’s Huw Bevan were extremely proud of the teamwork of all of the players and their ability to improve as the day went on. In what was the sides first competitive outing together, they united well against some bigger and more experienced sides and each individual player put a great amount of effort in to ensure that we came away with some fantastic experiences out of the day.
Once again thank you to all the parents and the rest of the coaching team, Manny Qadar, Danny Cadwallader, David Morgan and Ronnie Vidal.
Our Minis are back into training this weekend at New River, before travelling down to Richmond the week after for their next festival and another chance to build on a fantastic start to the season.
