Kept their heads high

Squad: Jake Wilkins, James Bunce, Adam Fairley, Ed Griffiths, Harry Bradshaw, Jack Gurney, Siddhant Dey, Alfred Mawdsley, Matthew Bellamy, Devan Owen, Monty Weatherall, Max Shepherd, Huey Chadwick, Blake Morris, Zac Collingbourne, Ollie Anderson, James Galvin, Harry Spennewyn, George O’Keefe.

Southend as Essex County Champions are part of the Super 10, and are considered a strong team. We fielded a fairly full A Team barring Monty, James T & Tommy Deane due to injury, not all sports related.

At the outset the teams seemed relatively even. Southend scored an early try which was not converted and A&C responded on 5 minutes from a fumbled line out when Sid picked up the ball and ran 45 m down the wing to score. Max converted to put A&C into the lead 7-5. However after the first 10 minutes Southend began to dominate the rucks giving them possession to enable them to make best use of their backs. They scored another try giving them the lead of 7-10. From this point Southend were able to demonstrate their power and superiority in the set piece playing very well and scoring 3 more tries in the first half although they had difficulty converting these tries. The Southend backs had impressive line speed and prevented A&C from getting the ball out to our fast wingers Huey and Blake. In turn, A&C did themselves no favours by over committing players in ruck, so when they did win the ball they were outnumbered across the back line. A&C defended well on occasions but their tackling was patchy with too many players missing tackles or tackling too high. A&C will have to improve in this area to bring an opposition of the quality of Southend to the ground. A&C’s line speed was identified by the players as another area for improvement, as we offered Southend too much time to establish their moves. The first half ended 7-29.

Having identified the problem areas at half time, the second half saw an improvement with A&C keeping Southend to only 17 more points but unable to add to their points total.

With the final score 7-46 it was a real defeat. To the boys’ credit, A&C did not give up and kept their heads high. However, there is work to be done in order to compete at this level. The players not only identified the areas to improve both at half time but also in the post-match debrief.
We wait until Jan 4th, our next Super 10 fixture against Old Albanians (who were narrowly defeated by Southend 13-7 earlier in the season) to establish whether there are improvements.

Lawson Shepherd