Fleetwood U10 host Burnley U10

Burnley made the short trip west to visit Fleetwood to take advantage of the spring weather for the opportunity of playing rugby. Recent bad weather has meant that most teams in the Northwest have missed out on playing against travelling opposition as pitches have been unusable due to the large amount of standing water present on them.

The recent rest bite from the constant rain had meant that the pitches were in optimum condition and the game could go ahead. Burnley brought an enthusiastic team who were welcomed to Fleetwood and their slightly understrength side was buoyed by a rotation of willing Fleetwood under 10s to ensure that everyone could be involved and the full eight a side game could go ahead.

Both teams started out gingerly with the lack of recent matches showing in some basic errors on both sides and some lazy tackling in the early stages. Once both teams had regained their “game heads” the quality of rugby improved greatly and the skills that they practice each week in training began to show. Fleetwood competed for the ball at every opportunity with some excellent rucking skills being displayed. Support work and communication meant that the team had plenty of possession and soon they were breaking through the Burnley defences both through the centre with Charlie Allonby making huge strides up the middle of the pitch and Stuart Hadgraft, Kenzie Allan and Lucas Burton each having great runs up the pitch out wide.

Hailey Ballentine again impressed with some great individual efforts and strong support all round. Joseph Holden showed his scrum half tendencies with a great combination of distribution and sniping runs from the scrums and rucks. Ansel Hargreaves, Will McKendrick and Fin Davison were impressive with their tackling and Fyn Egan again showing great handling skills.

Fleetwood debutant Thomas Drury impressed with some excellent support work and a great individual performance.
The outstanding performance of the entire squad and the way that they displayed the RFU Values by volunteering to play for the opposition left the coaches with a hard decision when it came to choosing the most outstanding players of the week. Even the squad themselves couldn’t agree a short list so it was agreed that the honours should be shared across the team as a whole and everyone was recognised for a tremendous effort.