Report by Mark Pendleton:

U13 Farnham A vs Alton A

Hampshire Champions U13 2023

Farnham retained the trophy! ?

The performance in the first half was exceptional, clinical, and the best I’ve seen all season.

The breakdown work, the structure, the hands, were off the chart. Half time score was 35-5 to Farnham.

Second half, Alton came out fighting and made it a lot harder for us.

Our defence and grit were superb, and on one phase we pushed them back from our 22 to the half way line.

The players kept fighting, and two more scores were added to the score line.

Comprehensively, Farnham won the final and our half / try line were very rarely under threat.

Big credit to Kayden who was was involved in a "situation" and reacted accordingly by retaliating through rugby.

Big credit to Harry C for being a great leader and captain

Also the ref was top drawer.

The other coaches and I could not be more proud of the performance but recognition has to be given to ALL the squad that made this possible: every training session where others not included in today’s team trained shoulder to shoulder with those selected.

And a huge big-up to others that have played in the Hampshire cup but didn’t get the final selection:

Luca
Joe L
Euan M
Joe N
Rowan R
Tristan
Tom S
Eddie

Apologies if I missed any others.

The Man of the match: George Mellor, who neutralised all their running forward threats.

Tries from:

George (pick and go on the blind)
Euan (chasing a kick from Harry B)
Euan (through the hands and great finish in corner)
Stirling (turnover by Joe, out wide to Euan and Stirling going blind)
Kayden (ball passed beautifully down line for it to come back and Kayden smashed it through the middle)
Harry C (from a penalty)
Joe W (after lovely run from Harry B and Kayden)
Joey (lovely passing through the hands)
Lucas N (Harrison went quick pass from a penalty to George who offloaded to Lucas N for the try)

All the following I haven’t mentioned were superb:

Riley (tackling)/ Finn (breakdown) / Lucas (tackling) / Joe (jackling master)
Tom SG (hard straight running) / Rory (quick accurate distribution) / Harrison (quick thinking) / William (control) / Joey (straight running)
Stirling (dump tackle king) / Hugo (hard running) / Dante (tackling, physicality) / Lucas N (assured running) /
Will B (solid both sides of ball) / Harry (leader from the back the vision and comms).

When I heard the other Farnham U13 team had won too, it was just the perfect day and thanks to all the Mums for sharing their day!

Lastly I would like to thank the parents and supporters for making it such a great day and obviously the first aiders for patching the lads up.

Mark P