U8: Newton Abbot & Okehampton v Salcombe
Monday 7 February, 2022, by Mervyn Down
Salcombe U8s finish their busy weekend still unbeaten despite being pushed to the last second by Newton Abbot’s strong team. The U8s should be very proud of themselves as not only was this their toughest encounter of the season, the opposition commented that we were by far the best they had met all season.
Salcombe U8s played Newton Abbot in the first game on a much smaller than normal pitch than they are used to, making turnovers from the 7 tag rule particularly challenging. Nevertheless, Salcombe pushed hard in defence and managed several turnovers, giving themselves the advantage and won the first game 9-6.
Winning the much anticipated paper-scissor-stone, Captain, Freddie, decided his team would start the game with the ball. Freddie’s sister benefitted from this decision and crossed over within the first 20 seconds. From the restart, Salcombe showed their renowned aggressive defence…pinning Newton in their half, 7 tags were made, Freddy-George wasted no time and took the points. Newton came straight back with a score, before Aussie scored the first of many he bagged. From the restart, Newton evened the scores 4-4 Freddy-George scored 2 more, the Captain scored another, and Aussie scored a further 2 one of which was from a trade mark clever run from Ella. Game 1 won 9-6
Game 2 was a much closer affair and possible the toughest we have played. Osgar started the scoreboard running and surprised himself by running nearly the length of the pitch to score from the start to put Salcombe in an early lead. There are some scores that make coaching worthwhile and puts smiles on faces, this was one of them! Newton levelled the scores quite quickly before player of the day Aussie scored a brace of tries to give Salcombe a lead of 3-2. Second half saw the game open up a little with both teams taking their turn to score. Freddy-George scored a couple more, Aussie added to his haul before Jarad squeezed in the corner for the last try of the game and giving the Crabs a 1 try win of 7-6.
The 3rd game of the day saw Salcombe play Okehampton, another team we hadn’t played to date. Okehampton had a large side which could have been sponsored by Gillette. This didn’t put the young crabs off though, in fact they were on fire by this 3rd game and won 8-3.
Aussie, FG, Freddie & Jarad all crossed over. Kai also nearly made it over only to have his try disallowed by the mean ref (coach Merv). Despite this, Salcombe won the final game 8-3
Player of the day was Aussie. Aussie’s trade mark is his tenacity in defence. Yet today he not only had this in abundance, he was top try scorer!
