Sunday saw Colts on the road again, to King’s Lynn to meet West Norfolk’s finest in the last round of the Colts Cup.
This match decides who goes through to the Colts Cup semi finals, and we know West Norfolk are no mugs – we had come out on the loosing side at Ellgia Fields before Christmas. So Colts came ready to play, with a full bench and even a couple of first team players along to warm up with us and lend a bit of moral support.
With the wind in the first half the game plan was pretty simple, keep kicking to a minimum, move the ball out and work with some of our standard attack patterns. It all sounds good when the coaches say it, but can Colts get it to happen on the pitch? The answer came in the first four minutes as a cracking bit of phase play got the ball quickly out to the wing where Idris was waiting to get past at least two defenders, and dot down a try in the corner. Will managed to convert a tricky shot despite the wind.
Play rumbled on, the first scrum set a pattern of Cambridge dominance that went on through the match, with the forwards proving totally unmanageable for West Norfolk’s pack. On the other hand, we were also showing a sad tendency to give away penalties in the breakdown, which cost us a lot of possession. So it took another 5 minutes to get back to an attacking scrum on Norfolk’s 5 meter line, from where Bucky peeled off and ran through two missed tackles to score under the posts..
It’s fair to say Colts had a bit of a purple patch in the next ten minutes, with lovely attacking shapes and lots of people getting a chance to showcase their skills, especially Ted (wonderful interception), Adam (always seems to know exactly where the touchline is), Heinrich (immune to tackling) and Rhys (step king). Work rate and commitment were excellent all round, and we finished the first half with three more tries; Idris and Toby DS both finishing a terrific team tries, and Adam managing to dot down a neat little grubber from Toby DS in the corner.
Into half time at 33 – 0, and a team talk about avoiding complacency and keeping the pressure on which Raff obviously took to heart, as on restart he took less than three minutes to score with a breakaway from the half way line, leaving us at 40 – 0.
But credit to West Norfolk who had a hard look at their defence and came back out as a different team in the second half, with commitment and a solid plan. Colts began to find playing against the wind, creeping fatigue and continued penalties around the breakdown were slowing them down. They got tempted into a bit of an arm wrestle up the middle and collected a lot of penalties and a few tactical errors which allowed West Norfolk to build a much better attack, and for a solid 15 minutes Colts were defending in their own 22.
Two West Norfolk tries were held up before they eventually got one try down, and then Colts numbers were cut with a yellow card. To their credit, Colts were unphased by this and an increasing number of minor injuries, and got on with the job of defence, managing to hold West Norfolk to two tries in the second half, with the final score of 40 – 14 to the visitors.
This means CRUFC Colts now top their pool for the Eastern Region Colts Cup and progress to a semi final against Wymondham on 12th April. Put it in your calendar – we look forward to seeing all of our friends, family and supporters at Ellgia Fields on the day.