Manchester Rugby Tournament

Today saw Daniel take part in his first tournament and first competitive matches of the 2007-08 rugby season. Prior to the tournament Daniel and his team mates had undertaken just 2 training sessions in the all new contact rugby – no more tagging, it is now onto the hard stuff!

The team were supported by their coaches and parents and we really thought that they might not fare to well in the tournament given their lack of match practice, but despite this we cheered them on as best we could.

The first pool match was against a local rival team, Lymm, the match was very close but fortunately Warrington managed to score one more try than Lymm and they won the match 2-1.

The second pool match was against Sefton and this match was spectacular as the boys really started to gel together. Daniel played a starring role in this match, keeping his position of winger he started to chase a Sefton player as he headed for the try line, Daniel realised he wasn’t going to be able to tackle his opponent legally and put in what can only be described as a “very high tackle” which unfortunately meant Sefton won a line out just yards from their try line. The line out was taken and fortunately for Warrington they managed to gain possession of the ball – the player with possession was Daniel and he obviously decided that he was going to make up for giving the ball away and proceeded to run the full length of the pitch and SCORE a try – it was amazing to watch him runso fast and to see the sheer look of determination on his face – needless to say by the time he put the ball over the line I was hoarse from cheering him on!

This try seemed to spur the team on and they went on to romp to a 4-0 victory.

This victory lead to a quarter final meeting with Stockport – now it was getting serious and the boys were playing brilliantly as a team and were determined that they were going to win, which they did. Unfortunately I can’t remeber the score as I was too busy cheering the boys on.

So now the boys were playing their 4th competitive match of the season and it was a semi-final against Manchester. The team were getting tired now and 3 matches of contact rugby were starting to take their toll and murmurings of “I am hurting” were heard but nevertheless the team were still determined that they were going to win the tournament. This match was a real toughy and also very close, the action went from end to end and despite going behind twice Warrington managed to level the score to 2-2 with just a couple of minutes to go and then unfortunatley Manchester scored a try in the last minute and they proceeeded to the final after winning the semi-final 3-2.

A few of the Warrington boys shed some tears as they had really wanted to win, they all took some cheering up as they looked utterly dejected as they left the pitch.

They all did brilliantly and I can’t wait to watch them play more matches this season – they look like they could romp to quite a few victories!