Sils Festival

By Sarah Wallis

Undefeated U11's maintain their momentum at Sils.

After the first festival of the season Stourbridge u11 had set a standard to follow being unbeaten at Moseley. The team entered for Sils festival were all desperate for their first games of the season. Lichfield were first up and everyone was ready, Tom Fullard kicked off with a taste of things to come dropping lovely high spinning kicks chased by a quick line desperate to win the ball which turned into a try very quickly. Lichfield kept choosing to receive and the same pattern followed for 4 tries. It was great to see Lichfield choosing to kick and things began to turn around and they relieved the pressure. The game then opened up a bit and Lichfield got into the swing of things. Unfortunately they couldn't break a tough defence and Stourbridge ended the first game with a comfortable win.

Next up were the hosts Sils who the kids had watched prior to playing and had clearly identified tactics to take down the big guy. This job fell to Billy who bravely threw his arms in front of his legs for his first grounding and then hung onto a leg for his second grounding. Sils were much more competitive than Lichfield and scored a great break away try. Stourbridge played their best rugby in this game and it was a pleasure to watch. They were attacking in waves and offloading with near perfect timing to support runners always finding space. The evasive play proved too much for Sils who couldn't adopt their normally strong tackling game. Stourbridge notched up another win.

The next two games were very similar and not as exciting. Sutton Coldfield and Tamworth were both very competitive in the breakdown and kept winning the ball. The Stourbridge defence held strong and didn't concede in either game. Whenever we managed to get the ball away from the breakdown chaos we scored tries. Although we were given good breakdown lessons in these games our evasion in attack was crucial to success. It was great to see another festival through unbeaten. Very proud of both Stourbridge u11 sides.