Saturday 28th April saw Leighton Buzzard RFC under 9’s attend the Aylesbury Festival, fielding one squad to compete against Camelot RFC, Beaconsfield RFC, Aylesbury RFC and Marlow RFC. The Buzzard squad was made up of the majority of players going on tour in May and was a great way of getting the squad playing to together prior to the May tour.
The first team up against Leighton were Camelot RFC, as this was the first game played by the Leighton squad their performance to start with was not ideal, handling errors, bunching up of players allowed Camelot to take the lead within minutes. Leighton came back from the slow start and quickly a series of tries for both teams followed, with Buzzards managing to come back from 3-0 to end with a 6-6 draw.
The second team to face Leighton were Beaconsfield RFC, this team fielded some physically large players with pace, which Buzzard struggled to tackle, resulting in some quick and successive tries by Beaconsfield. Leighton by now starting to gel as a team responded with a couple of tries; however it wasn’t enough to stop Beaconsfield win the game 5-8.
Third up to play Leighton were host’s Aylesbury RFC, after shaky starts on both the previous games this game started well for Buzzards, with a series of quick tries, far better tackles and some excellent individual runs. The arrival of two additional players for Buzzards (having played football in the morning) allowed some changes to the squad to rest players. These changes coupled with a better drilled squad led to an impressive win for Buzzards.
Last up to play Leighton was Marlow RFC this proved to be an extremely physical game with a number of Buzzard and Marlow tries fiercely contested. Ultimately Leighton proved successful and managed to maintain a two try lead to win 5-3. The Leighton Squad consisted of Ollie, Josh, Ewan, Jack, Shaun, Evan, James, Callum, Oscar and George. Overall the boys achieved two wins, one draw and one loss, which was excellent and a credit to them, the coaching team and the club.