Rugby News - Breakthrough girls join the Beach tournament.
Saturday saw an opportunity for the Breakthrough rugby girls to get in some competitive action. At Repulse Bay Beach, there was a beach rugby touch tournament and unfortunately the Police ladies were unable to raise a team to compete in the Disciplined Services Tournament, because of the protests, so Breakthrough stepped up and did the honours. There was plenty of matches against the Customs, Correctional Services, Immigration, the Auxies and the CAS and although we didn’t win any matches, the girls playing against the women from the different departments acquitted themselves well, scoring some good tries and above all they had a great time. Attached is a picture of the girls surrounding none other than myself!!
Today was the turn of the boys and first up at Tin Siu Wai was the U16s against HKFC. The inexperience of our boys was again obvious and the lineouts and scrums were particularly disorganised and some of the handling let us down at times as well, as we dropped too many passes at important moments. We also gave away too many penalties. However the effort and spirit of the boys was excellent. Our tackling was good and their tries mostly came from several phases of play, which left our lads out of position, allowing them some overlaps and 2 or 3 on one situations. We scored twice and lost 41 – 14. As the boys gain experience we will do better and some of our new boys are showing signs that they will be very useful players if they continue as they are. We must not forget this was only the second game of rugby for most of the team.
The second match was the U19s against Discovery Bay Pirates, probably the strongest team in our league. We were not helped by a number of injuries to a few good players in school sports days yesterday, but we still fielded a strong competitive team. The Pirates quickly realised they would not have an easy afternoon when a number of their better players got hit with some very hard tackles. However our early pressure did not result in any points and we found ourselves 17 – 0 down, due to some great Pirates back play. However the boys kept on trying and we fought back to only be 17 – 10 down at half time. Our second try was the best of the day, with young Monkey, sidestepping or dummying most of their team, with a fantastic run from the half way line, touching down in the corner. He really is an excellent player and a delight to watch. We kept the momentum going after the break and scored again to get to 17 -15. However after that, tired legs set in and we just didn’t win enough clean ball, meaning that we were on the back foot, defending for long periods. The pressure told and they scored again to go 24 -15 up. And then in the last 10 minutes, with cramp effecting a number of the boys, the floodgates opened and they scored 4 more tries and a drop goal, to run out 53 – 15 winners. We were better than the score suggested, but no complaints, the Pirates are a strong team and although they will know they were in a hard game of rugby, they were better than us on the day, particularly in the backs.
There are no games next weekend, so hopefully that will give a chance for the injuries to heal.