Can I start by saying how immensely proud I am of our team. They absolutely played their hearts out on Sunday at the Bedfordshire Mini Festival at Leighton Buzzard. It was a pleasure to see see how much they consistently improved over the course of the day and that their efforts in the semi-final against Bedford was some of the best rugby I have seen all season. Not a single one of them took a step backwards all day. Well done kiddie winks.

I am sure that there was some disappointment that, having gone so far, we were not quite able to walk away with the silverware, but I was not in the least worried. The kids did everything we asked of them, they made very few mistakes (and no one made the same mistake twice!), they tagged like demons, put huge pressure on the opposition teams and scored some cracking tries. At the end of the day, we had a dozen tired but happy kids.

We split the players into our usual "Red" and "Green" teams, and kept them in their squads for the day. We felt that the stability this gave the kids was very important, and I think it payed off with some great team-bonding and interplay / support play from the kids.

We played two simultaneous 4-a-side matches in each game, with the scores being aggregated at the conclusion of each fixture. First up in the Pool was Stockwood Park. We saw the usual slow start (I suspect that there may have been some nerves at play here!), but we came out on top, 17-15. Next up was Biggleswade, our toughest Pool game that ended honours even at 22 all. The final Pool game was against Leighton Buzzard, where a win would guarantee progression to the Cup stage. The kids responded with an emphatic 21-14 victory. Most pleasing about the pool games was to see that every one of our six Green Team players scored at least one try in every one of the three pool matches. How bad?

The end of the Pool stage saw us undefeated, but we finished as Pool runners-up to Biggleswade - I can only assume that Biggy had a better try difference to us, but I didn't bother to check. So we marched on to the Cup semi-final against Pool B winners Bedford. This was undoubtedly the toughest match of the day, and despite our great efforts, we came up just short, losing out 15-18. The scores and scorers are given in detail at the bottom.

We decided that there was going to be no Man of the Match awards on Sunday. All of the kids played their part to the fullest, all of them gave their very best, all of them deserved to be "MOTM". We could not have done as well as we did with even a single player missing.

I would like to conclude by thanking all the players for their efforts. It is days like this that make it all worth while. I would also like to thank all our parents for their support, particularly the coaches (James, Jason, Peter) and our score-keepers (Sabrina and Laura). Finally, I would like to thank the players and parents who could not be with us on Sunday due to the limitation on player numbers in the Festival: thank you for your understanding.

Luton Red Team 6 v 7 Stockwood Park
Tries: Daniel, Freddie (2), Harrison (2), Archie
Luton Red Team 9 v 8 Biggleswade
Tries: Daniel (2), Freddie (5), Harrison, Archie
Luton Red Team 11 v 5 Leighton Buzzard
Tries: Daniel, Freddie (6), Harrison (4)
Luton Red Team 9 v 8 Bedford
Tries: Daniel, Freddie (5), Harrison (3)

Luton Green Team 11 v 8 Stockwood Park
Tries: Lucas, Ben, Marcus (2), Gethin (3), Sammy, Joe (3)
Luton Green Team 13 v 14 Biggleswade
Tries: Lucas , Ben (2), Marcus (4), Gethin (2), Sammy, Joe (3)
Luton Green Team 10 v 9 Leighton Buzzard
Tries: Lucas (3), Ben, Marcus (2), Gethin (2), Sammy, Joe
Luton Green Team 6 v 10 Bedford
Tries: Ben (2), Marcus (4)

Jimmy
Under 7s Coach, Luton RFC
jimmy@lutonrugby.com
07806 716312