Bury B 20 v 30 Ipswich Gold (Seth, Leo, Xavi, Max, Harv, Will R)

Today was a belter of a game. A proper battle and every boy that took to the field in the Ipswich colours should be mighty proud of what they gave on a blustery, cold afternoon in Bury. It was a pleasure to witness the way this group of young men hung together and fought back from 20 – 10 down to take a great scalp from a very aggressive Bury outfit. They will be gutted. You men should be proud. I know everyone who witnessed it and watched you crawl off the floor having given your all are mighty proud of you. I’d practically lost my voice for all the right reasons at the end. Well done men, you were giants today.

What happened in the Battle of Haberden?

On a cold, crisp late November Sunday afternoon our squad of 18 ran out on a postage stamp of a pitch to do battle with a Bury side who we had beaten in a close one at the Lane in the Suffolk Cup not three weeks before. We took a little while to get going and struggled to get any kind of flow through our channels as we were very static onto the ball in the early exchanges, often finding ourselves going sideways and backwards rather than forwards. We missed a couple of tackles and let them in for the opener before Seth got us back level after good work at the rucks from our forward pack that allowed Mo to build us solid platforms from which to play. Again we switched off and let them back in with another fairly free run in before Leo showed real aggression to drive over and level it up again. We lost Fin Collins who had been working tirelessly on the right wing to create space to a ridiculous challenge at a ruck that should have seen a red for seriously dangerous play and lost another try to go in three two down at the break as we hadn’t switched back on after the break in play. Best wishes to Fin, you were great today young man.

At the break we talked about matching their aggression to a man and not letting our tackles be someone else’s responsibility. The boys regrouped and looked charged up and ready to go. Straight from the restart we missed a runner on three occasions and found ourselves 20-10 down with it all to do.

What happened for the rest of the game was simply on another level. We matched their intensity and raised it and slowly we ground them down after lots of sustained pressure and heavy tackling and rucking. It was simply beautiful to watch from a contact perspective. Everyone hit their tackles and they couldn’t live with us. We went left, we went right, up the middle, we looped. The boys were awesome. First Xavi powered over, then Max broke the line. Harv crashed over in the left corner and then Will Raven bounced off tackles to finish them off and put it to bed. The final whistle went and the boys sank to the floor in exhaustion whilst our subs poured on before rising as one to congratulate one another and thank Bury for a great game of rugby. I am immensely proud of all of them.

Star men

All of them. Simple as that.

Within that though there were some great individual performances. In the forwards, Rowan, Bill and Xavi as a front row were immense. Robert hit everything that came his way and some that didn’t. Leo was a bull as was Logan when he came on. Mo and Harv were both magical at nine and Seth was mercurial at ten. Sam W showed true captains spirit to play through pain and hit some great lines and Ted, Fin Collins and Ethan all showed great feet on a number of occasions. AJ was all over them and showed great line speed hitting tackles to knock them backwards and Max broke the line a number of times, one of which saw him in for a try. Will R had me in his ear for missing a tackle that resulted in their fourth try but kept his chin up and came back with some massive hits and rode out a number of tackles to get our final try.

My two stand outs today though amongst a team of stand outs were firstly Ollie W who got through so much work in a couple of positions that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in bed by 4:30pm tonight. Well done young man. And our MoM today after a brilliant performance where he hit everything and more and his body positions were spot on was Fred Hudson. Well done Fred. Top work young man.

Thank you’s

Daniel – thank you for coming to watch and for running the line young man. Brilliant job.

Parents and relatives for roaring the boys home. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

This week

Training Thursday and Sunday. Let’s get there. You’re playing for shirts in the Suffolk Cup the week after. Come on boys, let’s keep building!!

Other whole squad news

Alex Baker Woods started his refereeing course yesterday so that will help the whole squad on the training park as it is I feel often difficult to see things from a referring point of view when as a coach you have already made your mind up about an infringement. Well done Alex.