Rugby 7's Tournament

Usually, St. Faiths plays rugby matches with 12 players on each side. However, we had a tournament on Sunday that was only 7 a side. Sevens is different from twelves in the fact that you do not want to lose the ball. The ball has a 200 pound note on it. As a result of this, there is no kicking game whatsoever because if chip the ball away, 9 times out of 10 you will have lost the ball! Also, since there are so few players, there is a lot of breakaways (as shown above). In fact, I scored a try from a breakaway, but I will get to that later.

Anyway, the first match was against our old rivals, Gresham's. They beat us four tries to nil, but they are such a high standard school that we thought no one could beat them. Most of us predicted that they would win the tournament.

Our next match right afterward was against Spratton Hall. I thought that it was funny, because we we are going to play them on Wednesday in 12's! Anyway, we lost by less than to Gresham's, but still a remarkable defeat at 2 tries to nil.

There was a two match break after Spratton, so our coach told us that we really needed to get on the scoreboard and stop being quite so nice to our opponents. Half of our wishes came true in our next match, against Wilthem Hall.

St. Faiths still lost (again) to Wilthem Hall, but only by a very small margin. They managed to squeeze in 3 tries in the 10 minutes we had for each match, but St. Faiths fought back with two, of which were scored by our two top try-scorers, Ed Fairey and Will Zeitlyn. We were still not being aggressive enough, and we took the ball into contact much, much too often, which would usually result in a turnover, even though we are very strong in our rucks and scrums.

Lunch was a cup of delicious vegetable soup based on chicken stock and a cookie. It was just the right thing to warm us up (it was freezing!) for our next match.

Since we came last in our group, we had to face the third-place team in the second group, Winchester House. If we won, we would compete for the plate, the second-best honor you could get in the tournament, but if we lost, we would have to fight out who came in seventh and eighth. I personally think that our match against Winchester House was the most exciting of the matches.

Winchester scored first, with a breakaway down the left-hand side. I was very close to tackling him, but he sidestepped away while I zipped past him hopelessly and he scored. Soon afterward, another player of Winchester House found a gap in our defense and took off down the left hand side. I was on the other side of the pitch, as I usually was, but I took off. As I approached him, I hoped he would not do a sidestep as well. That would make two missed tackles on my part in the same corner. Luckily for me, he didn't. He just glanced at me, and then sped up a little bit. I took a chance and hit him hard hard as I could. He went down about 1 yard from the try line. Phew. There was a series of plays dangerously close to our try line, but we cleared the ball away after a while. Just before the first half ended, however, Winchester scored a second try, again as a breakaway, just to try to make them on the upper hand.

The second half was just as suspending. About two minutes into it, our man got tackled but Tom Cox, our tight head prop, rucked over beautifully, presenting me the ball right in front of me. I took my chances , picked the ball up and zoomed away.

Early on in my run, I could hear thundering footsteps behind me, closing in. I am a pretty decnt sprinter, so I avoided them for the first 40 yards. I planned to place the ball in the corner of the try zone rather than diving, afraid that I would knock the wind out of myself. However, just as I was getting ready to put the ball down, I felt someone trying to shove my legs into touch to make a lineout. I dived for it.

It felt like my feet were out of bounds. Maybe they were. Maybe not. Anyway, I ended up with half of my legs in touch, the ball under my chest, waiting to hear what the ref would say. Did I score? Or was I out of bounds?

"Try given." The two words that suddenly mad my life a ton happier that it already was. It was my first try of the whole season for me. I was completely out of breath, but very glad with myself. Eventually we lost the game 3 tries to 2, but I was still pretty satisfied with my work.

For the next match, I rested the whole thing, even though my coach and I were planning for me to go on in the second half. However, we were doing so well that we did not make any replacements. St.Faiths won that match 21-7. We ended up as the second-worst team in the tournament, but at least we weren't last.