Sub-14 v Caldas, Santarém, Évora

Read Luís Costa's match report and view Peter Fay's images from the games here.

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Sub-14: A WINNING WEEKEND

Match report by Luís Costa

Santarém CNEMA was the venue for this weekend’s 2nd round games for the sub-14s. For those who haven’t experienced its delights, it can only be described as a bleak mud-bath – and that’s at the best of times. With wet weather on Saturday morning, it offered its usual soppy greeting.

The first game was against Caldas, a team that we already knew from our 6^th birthday convivio, and once again was an easy win, this time by 28-0. We played quite well, and didn’t give any chances to Caldas.

The second game was against Santarém, a team we also knew to have some hefty forwards from our encounter at St. Julian’s at the beginning of October. We started very well, dominating the game, and a thoroughly deserved try duly came. But then the attacking mindset was replaced by a defensive one, with too much kicking the ball away, which gave control to Santarém. We defended extremely well though, with the massive Santarém nº 8 always under control and giving the distinct impression of not enjoying himself as might usually be the case against opponents so much smaller than him. If we were a little smarter we could have scored a couple more tries. Howevere Santarém was never near to scoring and the boys deserved their narrow 5-0 victory.

The third game was a friendly against Évora. This season we have a lot of backs, and only a few forwards. Many of our backs haven’t had much game time and so this was an opportunity for them to play a full game. Évora also put out their less experienced players for this encounter. Our second stringer backs gave the others a warning: they want to be in the first team! Playing an open and smart game, keeping the ball by passing around in small passes until a gap was there for the forwards! Four tries against Évora was a very good effort. They just need to be better at defence. 22-7 was the final score.

A great effort from everyone, in very poor conditions. We can be proud of our sub-14 players.

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View Peter Fay's images from the games here: http://goo.gl/8kcKF