Paviors RFC

Note: This game was against Retford U14’s but they are not set up on GMS so we’ve recorded it against the U17’s who are.

We travelled to a new club for the lads as we’ve not played against East Retford before. They had pulled a team of 14 together from their U14’s, U15’s and a couple of lads from Gainsborough. One of their players had been to work, cycled 10 miles to the game, to the play and cycle back to work in the afternoon. Now that is what I call a committed player. The first half was played as 14 a side and it was a great performance by Paviors.

From the first kick off the boys played with pace, supported each other, and passed the ball at the right times. Will, playing 2nd row, received the ball out wide, made ground and drew the last defender before making a fine pass to the flying Monty who ran in to score. This was the blueprint for the rest of the half.

All our players got involved with the passing moves, both forwards and backs, and the tries kept flowing with Fin scoring under the posts for the 2nd. After that I lost track of the order of the scorers so forgive me if these are out of order.

Our scrums were again very dominant against a Retford team who have had little opportunity to practice them. It was great to welcome Warren back into the front row today after his ankle injury . After a break down the right where we got the ball to Dylan on the wing who made 30m, cut inside and tried to offload to a supporting Henry a scrum was awarded to Retford for a knock on. When we won the scrum against the head near their try line, Oli picked up from Nr 8 and ran blind, knowing they had no cover there, to score another try.

We kept playing quickly when we had the chance and Reed, leading the team as Captain today, took an opportunity from a penalty to tap and go quickly gaining us ground. We kept up with the passing and getting the ball wide and this led to further tries. A long pass wide from Fin (that some of the crowd suggested may have been forward [about 10m]) found Benny at full pace who ran through to score.

Monty and Owen were playing on the back row for the first time ever and both had a fruitful morning. Owen scored 2 conversions, as did Cole as they shared the kicking duties. And Monty ended up with 4 tries in total and came off the pitch a very happy boy.

We defended well today when needed and rucked quickly and low helping us secure our ball and counter ruck on occasions, and after our tackling session on Wednesday it was great to see tackles being made low on lots of occasions.

Our 8th try of the morning was scored by Josh in only his 2nd game for us. When he came on he slotted in really well at outside centre and it capped off a really impressive 48-0 score line at half time.

It was a half of rugby that had plenty of positives as covered above. As always there are things to work on but the only one to pick out was not being too greedy, especially when there is a clear overlap that could have led to further tries being scored.

For the 2nd half we decided to totally mix up the teams to even things up and get everyone as much enjoyable rugby as possible. This was a much closer affair with end to end rugby and some very fun open rugby being played. The first try was scored by the “shirts” team and by the end 3 tries were scored by the “white” team. There could have been more tries scored if a couple of players didn’t fumble the ball over the line. The last “not” try was the white team being unselfish and passing to Morgan to score, only for Sam to get a hand in to cause the fumble.

The try scorers in the 2nd half were Owen, Benny and Fin and the final try was scored by a Retford player which lifted their spirits. They were a great bunch of lads and even after a tough first half they kept working hard and all seemed to come of the pitch with smiles on their faces. The whole game was played within the spirit of Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship which was fantastic to see from both sides.