In the club house Wales Vs France was playing and Ella was taking revenge on Felix C, for winding her up during Tuesday’s training session.

Out on the pitch, Andy and Matt were running lines warming the players up, in the biting wind.

Before the players got too muddy they gathered together for a team photo with Max giving it the full blue-steel.

With two full team running out on both sides, the spectators had a smorgasbord of good physical rugby to watch. The first try of the games was by Felix C (proud dad moment ?). The parents/ spectators braving the sharp wind had endured a difficult commute to the club because of the Marathon, but Khi’s dad Matt was flying high on beechams powders and his win in the RC scale national championship several years running.

The titanic conflict between Matlock and the Panthers did lead to a 4-ice pack game. With a couple of heavy tackles and heavier landings. Ella, along with several others, being side-lined for several minutes after knocks sustained during the games, and one Matlock player towards the end of the second match with suspected concussion. Luckily Jo was on scene to give advice and care, and I along with the the rest of the club hope he makes a swift recovery. A special thanks goes out to Jess for running to get the first aid bag as my old legs were not up to it ?.

Try scores today by. Felix C, Felix D, Lewis, Charlie, William, Oli, Khi.

Thoughts from the trenches:
Andy: Overall, very good. We fronted up to a lot of physicality today. We could have easily been overrun by a bigger side especially in the second game. We put in some strong performances coming out on top in both of their games, just played some nice rugby. We played some expansive stuff at times but when it was called for kept it in and went through the phases. We need to be more clinical at the break downs, but that’s always work in progress, it was a great day in the office. I’m just a very proud coach they did excellently and some great individual try’s just a great team effort.

Dave: For the first game of the season some well put together moves. Some very intense games of rugby, petty close.

Garvin: Matlock had some very good players, in both teams. One team was a bit more physical than the other. On the whole we did well with the rucks but could have been a bit quicker. The good thing is when we got the ball we tried to play it out wide, with Lewis on the wing and pace to burn. They did well, with a few things to work on, specifically in the ruck where we stood off a little bit. The second game was a lot more physical, and the good thing was we said to them before the match, they will come at you down the middle and say can you stop me, and we did. Good solid commitment, every season they deliver.

Matt: Overall a good performance, although we did not win ether match, no one was really keeping score. To be frank and honest, the first game we did not wake up and because we were slow to the break down the Matlock players were taking the ball straight off us and scoring try’s running through several players. If you are not going to tackle then you’ll struggle, rugby’s a physical game and they will do it all day every day. Once that first game of the season had been taken out, we discussed where we had gone wrong. We lost the second game narrowly, however, the performance absolutely changed, and people took on the points we had covered and made it more physical and precise at the finish with increased distribution. We have points to work on but nothing to worry about we are going to take that into the session.

Thank you to Matlock for a great first game of the season, and sorry for the difficult journey to the ground.

Thanks to Andy, Dave, Garvin, Matt, Richard and a missed Ben who was help out with the U10’s.

D.A. Cooke (Roving Match Reporter, U11(s) proof-reading Rachel Cooke any comments please email: Rugby@dacfox.com.

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