Our Under 8's first fixture of the season

On Sunday we played hosts for the first time this season, and were very pleased to welcome Poole RFC to PBL. Poole Minis section is only a couple of seasons old, so it’s great to be able to mix with newbies and, hopefully, expand their rugby experience. We might have only had four Poole players join us, but they all got stuck in and did some great stuff.

The main aim of the day was to give us all some match experience. Poole haven’t played a 6-a-side match yet as they don’t have the numbers, so it was really nice to be able to let them have a go. Also nice that they just mixed in with our lot, and our kids accepted them and let them play - spot on!

While all the kids just want to have fun and play rugby, we, as the coaching and management team, want them to be able to play to their best ability, while embracing the core values of rugby - Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship.

In case you are wondering why we do some of what we do, as well as teaching rugby skills, we’re also trying to switch players from “I must score” to “the team must score” (#Teamwork #Discipline #Sportsmanship). This can be the hardest part of coaching, and if we don’t get the message through, some of the kids just won’t last a festival on the vastly bigger pitch we play on as U8’s.

While we love watching your kids perform an end-to-end run zigging and zagging around defenders, we would much rather 6 kids advance as a team and support each other to ultimately score more tries over the course of a match/festival/day.

If you ever have any questions about our methods, please feel free to speak to Andy - preferably after the session. We’re very much a team effort, which includes parents :)

Anyway, back to glory!

We have a new trophy. Ok, it’s more of a shield, but as this is the last season of playing Tag, we have a Tagtastic trophy which will be awarded to…. drum roll… the person deemed to have done the best Tagging in the session! This might be whoever took the most Tags, took some spectacular Tags, or just took a Tag when they don’t get very many very often. Our inaugural Tagtastic winner definitely fulfilled the first two criteria - for being Tag monster, the first winner is Alfie. Well done, Alfie!!

Scarey. For some amazing running, try scoring, tagging, this week Scarey goes to an old hand, which seems crazy to say as he’s only 7. Well done, Aidan!!

Trophy. Some kids are just good all the time, and some are good all the time and then step up to be even better! For some amazing rugby, and bouncing after taking a knock, this week’s well deserved trophy winner is Freddie. Well done, Freddie!!