Under 13s at the Ellon 7s

Ellon 7s- 4/5/19
A GCC squad of 10 travelled to the meadows on a chilly and windy Saturday morning.

First game was against a well practiced Mackie side who although were a bit bigger, were not that much better, we scored 1 try to their 4 but progress in the second half was hampered by a strong head wind and hail blasting into the boys eyes. Both sets of boys were struggling with a skippy ball and an offer of a brand new ball from our stock was turned down by the officials for reasons best known to them.

The second game was against Garioch/Deeside and was almost a white wash apart from a single try, the boys just seemed to forget to run forward or tackle, almost resigning the tie before playing, not a good performance.

After a wee chat, the boys were up against a HUGE Ellon 1s team and suddenly they started playing with a bit of self belief and after some brave hard running and support along with keeping the Ball’s live and away from the Giants we won the tie 5-3. Smiles all round.

Fourth game against Huntly saw us relax a bit and we were a couple of try’s down before we knew it, with s lack of tackling again contributing to our predicament, that said the boys stuck to the task and ground things out to get to 3-4 in the final play of the game. After Huntly took too long to assemble the scrum a free kick was awarded to us, which we managed to get down the line to run up to 2m out, after a bit of mauling Joe Rasmussen scored a classic props try to keep our hopes alive. Ending the game 4-4.

The last group game was curtailed to 5 minutes each way and against Ellon2s which essentially was their backs. A bit of ball watching rather than moving to get into a good position and poor tackling again let us down, but with ball in hand we made a better game of it in the second period. We lost 5-2 and were a bit unlucky with the bounce of the ball, but that’s 7s for ya. I think if we had had the full duration we way have got at least another try as we were really going for it at the end.

A lot of good performances in attack, but defence, pressure on kicks and anticipating correct field position lets us down. Jake Thomson’s contribution was very notable. Good to see all the lads coming together in between the ties and keeping in great spirit, even though it was freezing.

Thanks to all the parent helpers today much appreciated.

Report by Graeme Buchan