Teams 
At the start of the week Bideford had two very strong side that were ready to travel to Bude, but with the dreaded COVID numbers were shortened, and allowed Bideford to travel with 15 kids to a brisk morning at Bude RFC.
As ever Bude were fantastic hosts and we agreed rather than have too many kids standing around that we would play 12 aside which narrowed the pitch space and the game became a very valuable lesson in defence and in attitude to the game.
With less space to work you can imagine it became a bit of an upfront battle and Bude were very good in this area. Bideford shot off with a 2-0 lead but silly mistakes crept into the game and a lack of enthusiasm led to Bude coming back very strongly with their big lads powering through the tackles.
Bideford didn’t seem to be at the races at all and unfortunately gave away some soft trys to the opposition and some injuries didn’t help with Theo having to retire early with a bang to the head….Best check ever…..What day is it….I never know that anyway….what was the surf like yesterday…brilliant! The bigger players seemed to back out of the ruck challenge and there was no consistency at 9 with Jake retiring hurt with his problematic arm.
Some harsh but fair words at half time allowed the lads to take stock of what they needed to change and they started to re-establish themselves with some powerful running form kids.
It was really hard to get any sort of pattern going with so many kids in the middle of the pitch. But this is where we will need to be come January when we do start to play 12 a side.
The latter part of the game saw a lot of changes with people needing rests and Bude continued to hit the hard running lines but Biddy held up towards the end and some desperate defence at the end held Bude out in the last play of the game.
Lessons to be learnt – Tackles need to be lower, if we go in with the ball we need to hold onto it not give it away, rucks have to be better and we need to defend in units if the big guys are going to run at us.
The outstanding player of the day had to go to Seb who was incredible when he got some space and he seemed to just find that line. Strong efforts from Caleb who scored a beaut of a try through his tackling, Harry and Clark as ever made lots of bone crushing tackles and some great runs.
Trys – Seb 3, Harry 2, Caleb 1, Clark 1
