**Banbury “1”

Isla, Rosie, Charlie M, Charlie D, Henry, Lorcan, Tom, Tobias, Junior, Bruno, Sam and Harry.

The Banbury “1” team faced a tough group with 6 matches against strong sides and for the first tournament of the season, played really well and learned a huge amount. It was great to see the squad putting our training into practice and the tackling and rucking showed great promises for the rest of the season. As a coach it was a true pleasure to see the enthusiasm, bravery and simple hard work put in by all players.

The team won their first three matches with a great mix of strong defence, strong running and good support play. Equally importantly, the team started to show the ability to adapt to different refereeing interpretations and to secure their own ball at the rucks. In a hard fought contest against Towcester in their 2nd match, the team scored a winning try through winning turnover ball at a ruck and following three strong runs and good support play with players taking offloads or securing ruck ball, the move ended with a good pass into space and a final scoring run from 10 metres out. Great rugby involving nearly all of the players!

Although the team started to run out of puff in the final games, all matches were close and hard fought and on another day, the team could have ended up winning 5 of the 6 matches. There were lots of positives and good team spirit to take forward into upcoming games and I think all of the team will have learned a lot from the experience.
Special mention to Junior who - on his match “debut” for the club – caught the eye of a number of the opposition coaches with his strong running and commitment to the tackles.

**??Banbury "3"

Perfect Rugby conditions greeted us at The Towcester festival with Banbury fielding a great turn out with three equally balanced teams.
Banbury 3 coached by Toby and Tim showed all the training done over the last few weeks was sinking in and paid off with some superb tackling and rucking with great performances from everyone.Ben Stacey delivering some great tackles against some players who were much bigger than him he took them by surprise! Some outstanding running from Teddy Kay and Sonny Goode and the first and second games were soon in the bag. The 3rd game against Buckingham saw Sammi Niazi and Miller Somerton driving through tackles for some awesome tries. The 4th game prooved to be much more of a challenge with the boys coming up against Towcester's best team. Despite Banbury's best efforts Towcester managed to thwart and break down our attack resulting in a victory for Towcester despite a very good effort from our boys. The end of the day saw the last game Banbury 2 playing Banbury3 with the whole teams out on the pitch at the same time referee by Mike. No quarter was given by either side and an even game resulted with some unstoppable runs from William Rogers and Sammi Niazi both of whom limped off the field after their efforts at the end of what had a thoroughly enjoyable day.