Buzzard U 15 21  v Ampthill 12

The under 15s played Ampthill on Sunday & served up another hard fought game that went to the wire.  Ampthill started the stronger & were quickly 7 – 0 ahead with a well worked try but Buzzards were already showing some resistance with Smokin’ Joe Beaumont & James Batchelor leading the resistance at some very competitive rucks.

Both packs fought for possession & the front 5 were pretty impressive both in the tight, where the strength & nous of Connor Probert, Jamie Hooper & Harry Wears came to the fore (in Harry’s case of course that was more strength than nous). Joe Woodman policed the fringes, flirting with the offside line (some present put it a little stronger than that) & making his presence felt against his old club.

The possession led to some good runs from the backs with Will Guyon & mastermind Braithwaite playing a distributing role & orchestrating a number of penetrating attacks, one of which launched Ollie Guyon on a bursting run that saw him score under the posts.

Alistair Hills was taken out of the inside centre comfort zone & thrown in at full back, no more the preening vanity we have seen, he threw himself into his defensive role with gusto, making last ditch try saving tackles on a number of occasions, he got his reward with a chance to score & put Buzzards 14 – 7 ahead at half time with Beaumont adding his second successful conversion.

Ampthill were far from finished & closed the score to 14 – 12 where it remained for most of the second half, the visitors nearly took the game when Hills fed his old teammate MacLeod with a beautiful offload, unfortunately the Flying Scot MacLeod left the club this season & was playing for Ampthill. With the game in the balance the last move of the game saw Hills cut an incisive line for his second & the winning try again converted by Beaumont.

Congratulations are due to both teams for a superb display of rugby, training continues on Wednesdays at 7pm, all players welcome.