Double champions at Moulsford

24th March, 2011

On the last Sunday of the spring term Packwood’s Under 13 and Under 11 rugby sevens teams travelled down to Oxfordshire to take part in the highly competitive Moulsford Sevens Tournament – and both teams returned to school with the winners’ trophies.

Under 13 coach, Mr Adams, writes:

This was a very tough competition which regularly draws some of the strong southern rugby schools. The Packwood team had a daunting group playing against The Downs, Oratory Prep, Farleigh and Davenies. We played some very close matches which lead us to a semi-final against Winchester House. With some good, strong defence and creative attacking play we were able to secure a 19-7 win. We then came up against The Downs again in the final. We had beaten them in the group stages but this was a completely different ball game. The boys rose to the occasion with every member of the 10 man squad putting in 110% effort. Packwood won 26-7! Well done boys!

Mr Reavill who coaches the Colts Under 11 team writes:

The Colts VIIs embarked on an ambitious weekend of Caldicott tournament on 19th March followed by the Moulsford tournament on 20th March – two prestigious, high quality competitions in two days made for a memorable weekend.

At Caldicott we progressed through the early stages as group winners thanks to three close, hard-fought matches, including an epic game versus The Dragon School which in the last couple of minutes, saw us clinch the game with one of the best tries scored in 7s ever (probably). In the quarter-final we came up against the hosts and lost in extra time after a frustrating bounce – which sounds unfair, but we could have won it in the first half when they were rattled. However, even better was to come at Moulsford.  The boys played unbelievably well – perfect, fluent, free-scoring rugby. We won our group, unbeaten in normal time in all seven matches, none of which was easy, to progress to the semi-finals.

The semi-final was a pulsating, stunning match – three tries conceded in the first three minutes, but after half-time we regrouped, performed well and dragged it back to 3-2 before unfortunately conceding another. In a tremendous display of sevens the team kept up the pressure and eventually secured victory, 28-26. And so to the final, where yet again we conceded but then prevailed 21-7. Many, many kind words were said to describe the team and every single one was deserved.