U15s Battling Defeat

Weston travelled to North Bristol this Sunday and both teams provided a really entertaining and hard fought game of rugby. Weston hadn't had the best preparation with a few latecomers and having to travel from changing rooms to the pitch and were clearly not focused in the early stages. Too much standing off allowed North Bristol's excellent pack to dominate and Weston quickly found themselves trailing by 14 points. Changes were made with Ashley Hardman and Aivaras Gaciauskas (Chow to you and me) being brought on to fire things up a bit and this soon had the desired effect. Weston's committment up front from this point was outstanding and with the tackling equal to this, Weston were able to keep out a much stronger and better drilled set of forwards. In the backs fly half Stefan Thompson-Rose made some great tackles and was well supported by Harry Lewis. At half time there had been no further scores. The start of the second half was all important and Weston took the initiative with their best passage of play of the game. The forwards provided quick ball and at last the backs showed what they were capable of when an excellent miss pass from Stefan Thompson-Rose created space for Harry Spedding, who finished superbly well in the corner. The conversion was missed, but Weston were now back in the hunt. The rest of the game saw North Bristol continue to attack through the Weston midfield, but being repelled with some outstanding committment. The backs midfield then applied great pressure and handling mistakes from Bristol resulted. With only 10 minutes to go, Weston could've added to the score when a great move in the backs once again created space for Harry Spedding. This time however, the cover defence was sound and Weston couldn't break through. The effort of the game was now beginning to tell and Weston began to miss tackles (although some weren't through tiredness if we're honest.) This allowed North Bristol to show their power and they managed to crash over for two late tries - although Harry Lewis appeared to hold up one of these over the line. The final whistle saw Bristol deservedly winners by 24-5. This was a really good effort from the Weston players who can take heart from the committment they showed. A few need to get the tackle bags out, but overall this was a great improvement on last week. Ashley Hardman deserves a special mention after a brief holiday down the road in Villa Hornet, and a good performance. Callum Schafer and Aryan Foroughi were excellent in the loose but the stand out performance was Stefan Thompson-Rose who created Weston's try and prevented several others.