Hertfordshire were overwhelmingly dominant in their county games, at both age groups, yesterday. The U18s destroyed hosts Leicestershire 78-0, scoring 14 tries in the 70 minute game (see the Herts blog for details), while the U15s swept to a convincing win in a three-way tournament beating Leicestershire 32-5 (six tries, two for Syd, one for Florrie) and then Notts, Lincs and Derbys 20-5 (these games were "only" 35 minutes, so the scoring was almost as one sided as in the U18 game).
Results of (most) of the county games are now appearing on the Rugby Roundup website (look under "Competitions" and then "Under 15" or "Under 18") - which is a great breakthrough, presumably coming from the merger with the RFU. Though the website suffers from some seriously annoying pop-up adverts, once you have waded through it all you will find full team lists and scorer information for most of the games.
Looking through these results a few highlights stand out. Lancashire U15s - not historically the strongest of counties - destroyed Yorkshire 61-0... in Yorkshire, a truly astonishing result considering that Yorkshire was a Region on its own until this season, though maybe we saw a foretaste of this with the significant improvement by Lancashire teams at the National 7s back in May.
Elsewhere in the U15s Surrey thrashed Sussex 44-0, and Devon were almost as dominant in Cornwall, wining 48-12. but other games were closer. Its good to see former East Region colleagues Essex rebuilding as they beat Middlesex 19-10, and the same applies to Eastern Counties - in deep trouble last season - who ran East Midlands close losing only 20-12. On the other hand it is worrying to see that the Staffordshire/ Warwickshire CB were unable to raise a side - not an area that you normally think of as being weak.
In the U18s (in the games were results have been published) East Midlands almost matched Herts with a 70-0 win over Eastern Counties, and Dorset and Wilts blew Somerset away by 78-5. Other games were rather closer, but Devons U18s achieved the double with a 26-10 win over Cornwall, as did Lancashire with a 17-10 win over Yorkshire. Joe Randall's old county - Gloucestershire - had few problems beating Oxfordshire 37-0, Hampshire sneaked home 12-7 against Kent. Staffs & Warwicks did get an U18 side out, but they lost 26-20 to NLD, and finally (and perhaps a surprise result) Oxfordshire beat Berkshire 21-5.
One thing you may notice is how counties with strong U15 team also tend to have strong U18 teams, which presumably reflects the strength of the game at club level in each county (okay, county coaches may help - but even the most brilliant of coaches would be hard pressed to make silk purses out of sows ears in only two or three training sessions!). When you think about where the big clubs are - the Lancashire U15 and Oxfordshire U18 results aside (surely Berkshire is is mainly Reading, for heaven's sake!) - there are no huge surprises. We know its good in Devon (Exeter Saracens, to name but one excellent club down there), and that the (unfortunately former) Gloucester Girls Rugby Trust did amazing things in that county. Dorset will be drawing on Wimboune, amongst others, and Surrey will presumably have the likes of London Irish behind their success.
However, the overall message that comes from - admittedly only just the first round of results - is how amazingly strong the game in Hertfordshire is. So, if you trialled for the county squad but didn't get in, don't have hard feelings - you were trying to get into one of the best county squads in England!
Monday, November 08, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Isn't there a bit in the laws which state that a points difference of 50 stops the game. Wonder if the players involved in those cricket score games learnt anything?
ReplyDelete