A good day’s work and tremendous effort from the U18s who did not look out of place and gave a real energy boost to the game.

Hampstead tried to muscle 1871 when the whistle blew at the start of the game, but after weathering the initial foray, 1871 kicked into gear with Ilan Trowbridge (U18) scoring early from a very well worked try which started with a winning scrum, from within the 1871, 22 metre area. The ball went wide, and Takehiro Shiraishi (U18) put on the afterburners, with a great run through into Hampstead’s half, before recycling the ball with then quickly went through various pairs of hands, completely killing their defence and allowing Ilan space to cut through the created gaps to score.

Hampstead again tried to muscle up on 1871, but Aiden Jones wasn’t having any of it and put a marker down for them to take note of, unfortunately earning himself a yellow card in the process, as the solid tackle he made took the Hampstead player’s legs above the horizontal. However, the rest of the team did take that lead and gave Rasaan Samms an opportunity, a minute later, to increase the lead after Hampstead gave away a free kick with an early shove in the scrum. Kavan Fitzpatrick took a quick tap, carried, then offloaded and once again Takihiro Shiraishi (U18) carried hard and fast, offloaded and the ball went through the hands and Rasaan was the willing recipient of the ball and sliced through the Hampstead defence. Harrison Slater joined in and converted the extras.

Unfortunately, Hampstead were gifted an opportunity, which they duly took, after we kicked the ball out of the ruck and from that, they also took a quick tap penalty and played their short game of picking and going repeatedly, to suck in the 1871 defenders, before playing the ball out wide to score.

The next two scores came from similar plays, at 21 minutes and 25 minutes, with Kavan Fitzpatrick scoring and conversion by Harrison Slater and Jonathan McKeogh also scoring. Both tries came from lineout wins, good handling to stretch the defence and in the case of the second score, the ball was rewound which again killed the Hampstead defence who could not cover so much ground quickly.

At 34 minutes, Hampstead had the last laugh by scoring and converting there efforts, again coming from their pick and go play. They were very patient with this, by going through numerous phases to make the score. Unfortunately for them, their try scorer, the big go to ball carrier, injured himself in the act of scoring and played no other part in the game.

The second half, despite the horrendous penalty count, it was all 1871, with all of the tries coming from the platform of winning the scrums, then moving the ball wide. Rasaan Samms scored his brace at 2 minutes, from one of the hardest runs he has produced all season. He took the ball from within the 1871 half, straightened up and literally ran through Hampstead players, to score under the posts. Harrison Slater converted.

The next try, which was at 9 minutes, came from Aiden Jones, who was clearly making up for his 9 minute first half yellow card. He took the ball off a quick ruck ball and cut through a space in the Hampstead line.

The final try at 18 minutes came from Danny O’Sullivan, who took the ball which had been played out wide and he out paced the scrabbling Hampstead defenders.

Unfortunately from this moment on, the referee penalised 1871 repeatedly for numerous offences, which included awarding another yellow card. This time it went to Joe Kelly (U18), at 23 minutes, for not rolling away. He also gave a yellow card to a Hampstead player at 25 minutes, for what could be termed ungentlemanly conduct, but was in reality “a bit of handbags”. None of the players let that deter them and the game resumed in the right spirit.
The referee was injured, he rolled his ankle and was in obvious pain, but applause must go to him for continuing on and allowing the game to go past the 60 minute mark, so that the score could stand. It went over the 70 minute mark on my clock and by then he clearly could not continue. Frankly, I was surprised he managed to go that far, as he could hardly walk.
The U18’s showed great spirit in this game and they all stood up well to their first games of men’s rugby.

Exciting times ahead for them and 1871.