The Junior Colts A team bounced back from an under-par performance in their first fixture of the year against a well organised and talented Clifton side, to show their true colours against QEH on Saturday.

Playing on their 4G pitch presented a 'carpet like' surface for which to play expansive running rugby, for which the players duly obliged! It was in the early minutes when Jack Saxton, joined the attacking line from fullback to dodge and handoff five opposition players to cross for our first score. The U15 team were demonstrating what we had worked on in midweek training, showing structure in defence and controlled aggression at the ruck to ensure we could go through the attacking phases. The next score came from a penalty five metres out, which Heryck Gallimore took quickly and powered his way over from short range.

A few minutes later, Jack Blackwell spotted space for Ollie Wotton-Perry, and found him with a cross-field kick, Ollie took the ball cleanly to score an intelligent try. Moments later from an attacking scrum, Theo Winsor pounced on a ball popping out of the scrum from Number 9 and was able to crash over, which was converted by Jack Blackwell.

Taunton were playing with good attacking width, going from 5m to 5m, which was stretching the QEH defence. On one such occasion, through good handling the ball found winger Charlie McGuiness in space, who used his agility to score in the corner.

Following half time, McGuiness got on the score sheet again with some elusive running, beating several defenders on his way to the try line. Heryck also found himself in some space and turned on the 'afterburners' to scorch his way through the opposition midfield. Artem Barbariush finished off the Taunton try scoring with a typically 'bullish' run tight to the ruck that saw him bulldoze over!

QEH were able to piece together some good pieces of play latterly in the game, some weaker Taunton tackling allowed them to build momentum and territory, an area which Taunton will have to tighten up on against better opposition.

Stand out performances came from Nic du Toit at number 8, who was powerful throughout on both sides of the ball. Hartley Colbourne also demonstrated his unselfish nature and rugby intelligence to find teammates in space and to know when the ball needs to go wide.

It is with plenty of optimism we go into our next match against Collegiate on Saturday 30th September.