There are beautiful mornings at Malone Fields and there are beautiful mornings at Malone Fields when you give Chester a good humping! This was by far the best performance of the season (some might say of the last 5 years!) all-round this was remarkable! Chester arrived obviously full of expectations, they would normally view this as a very winnable fixture, with us never having managed to beat them before! They are always a top team to play against and they have threats all over the pitch, they are big, skilful and fast. However ….

The boys looked on top form from the off, I was very pleased to see them leading their own warm up drills and completing them with precision with good levels of team work and competitiveness. Ben Griffiths was our Captain today and certainly lead from the front, we made sensible decisions and worked hard for each other. Special mention to our debutant with Edward Unsworth re-joining the club after his brief sojourn with Calday (he obviously saw the light!)

The level of intensity today was something I have never seen before at U11 level, and I think that is what put Chester on the back foot, they didn’t have any answers to our boys today. They were bested at the breakdown and could not find a way to break down our defence, lead brilliantly by Jasper Richards and Luke Murphy. Then when we had the chance to run at them we stretched their defence by passing the ball and ran some superb lines through the wider channels. I was so proud of the boys today, I have been drilling into them that they need to make sensible decisions on the pitch and think with their “heads up”, and apart from one monumental brain-fart when we kicked the ball to straight to Chester (come on Toby – you’re better than that!!), we were superb!!

The Play of the Day was the work that went into our first try, it was the epitome of a team try. We had been under the pump and defended superbly when some excellent counter rucking meant that we stole Chester’s ball. Simple rugby meant that 2 phases later we were shipping the ball out wide to our speedster Ben Griffiths on the wing, only for Oliver Arnold to decide that he wanted to intervene in this magical moment by not passing the ball! I am sure I was not the only one who was desperate for him to pass the ball to Ben, but he made a decision and a decision that turned out to be a fine one. He turned on his took on the defence on the outside only to step off his trusty right foot and then came the after-burners – who knew an Arnold had them? – and he managed to score under the posts.

This was the taste of things to come apart from a brief period where Chester were dominant at the breakdown and we took our foot off the pedal, but Chester did only manage one score when we “forgot” about this tackling lark.

To say it was a landslide would imply that Chester rolled over, they certainly did not, but they were dominated by some fantastic rugby from ALL The Saints, the foundations were laid by our “forwards”, Jasper Richards, Luke Murphy and Finnan Ashton were superb, William O’Halloran and Lewis Cairns were well and truly punching above their weight. All this hard work meant that Ben Griffiths was able to use the space created by the big boys, aligned with his speed and strength to run in two more tries. These were followed up by some hard running tries from Max Frodsham, Luke Murphy & Edward Unsworth.

Our Man of the Match this week was Jasper Richards who was a master of the dark arts this week and there is no doubt he was fantastic and certainly deserved the award, but in truth it was a fantastic team performance and I think it could have been awarded to any number of the boys.

On a final note, I don’t think we have had the chance to welcome our new Assistant Coach – Phil Booth – but I think that there can be no coincidence that this performance is after you were appointed Phil! Keep up the good work!

Well played to all of the boys keep it up! Some very proud coaches!

Next up a training session, taking us into the festive season!

See you Sunday!

Dano