Redfield U8s have been honing their defensive technique and intensity in the last few weeks. The greatest proponent of the refined art of tackling is coach Kevin Siau who, on a Friday afternoon, can be found venturing to improve the boy’s minds with the subtle points of the trajectory, contact and direction of forces, all very well grounded in physics of course. Rusty Mandla is less nuanced in his approach, preferring to wrap his opponent up (in this case, Ollie Twyford) before bodily and unceremoniously dumping him into touch. Both approaches work well for me. In fact, most Redfield Rugby U8s fans will attest that their bucket-hatted coach gets no more excited when he sees our young troupe contact their opposition, stop them in their tracks and drive them to the ground. It tells us all something very important about our boy’s ability to conquer their fears, employ their training for this contact sport safely and commit their body for the sake of the rampant lion.
This Saturday was no exception. Our first sortie with Pennant Hills Barbarians saw Mstr Mandla mow down his would-be tacklers and open the scoring for Redfield. This put a collective spring in all the Lion’s steps because following this, it was open season on the Barbar’s tryline. Tries to Noah Sahyoun with an assist from Raphael Sahni & Mason Sahyoun (x2) followed in quick succession. Notable tacklers were Joshua Yi, Daniel Sarina & Alex Siau who managed to stop a rampaging Barbarian prop from reaching their own tryline and forcing a Redfield scrum. Mstr Siau playing his role as halfback always found Captain Geoffrey Smith’s ready hands who had options to go out to Daniel or across inside to Joshua Yi who is becoming a safe pair of hands for the team. Mstr Yi also secured the much-valued Breakdown King followed closely by Alex Siau.
Our second game saw a much tougher match up for the U8s, with their prospects dashed from the outset not only with the self-appointment of this author as referee but also because of an executive decision taken by said referee to donate two players to swell the Hills’ ranks so we could have a 9-a-side game. The decision proved disastrous for the Redfield campaign because not only was the ref a dud, but also because Mason Sahyoun and Dominic Jaucian both crossed the tryline to score…for the other team! Dominic completed a fantastic 30m sprint down the touchline where no one could catch him. Mason gave no quarter to his friends from Redfield as he tackled and entered the ruck very well. Their sportsmanship and skill was such that Redfield was forced to award Mason with man of the match.
But it wasn’t all one-way traffic, just mostly. There were plenty of forced offloads by the Redfield team which saw supporting players scrabbling around for the ball and so very few rucks were formed. Oscar Do was full time hooker for Redfield and played his role alongside Logan Sarina in the lineout and scrum very well. Both Oscar and Logan could be seen grabbing onto a few players to try to bring them down and twice Oscar came up for the ball looking for the tryline. His efforts would have been rewarded but for an errant forward pass. Never mind: the gains of the last weeks for our props have been very pleasing. Enter Xavier Kennedy and Raphael Sahni to be best tacklers for this weekend to savour what would otherwise have been a rout. When they contacted, few got up again proving their technique and intensity is well-developed.
In all, as the season enters its last few weeks, us coaches and managers are very proud of our U8s outfit.
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