Prep Rugby Festival Highlights

Published by Denstone College on Tuesday 6th of December 2022

In Prep school rugby, The Elms Festival is our ‘World Cup’. All the schools who enter are excellent rugby schools and travel from Sheffield to Leicester to Nottingham and the competition is fierce.

There were ten teams placed into two groups. In our first match, we played The Elms and won an incredibly tight game 2-1 with Oli and Felix scoring the tries. We then played Nottingham High School and won 3-1 against another fine team. We’ve been working with some our players during lunch times on our set plays with Henry starting each passage of play. His fine passing skills were evident as we were able to break away with Felix powering through twice and Oli’s nimble feet allowing us to score tries. Our third match saw us play Birkdale ‘B’ and it was another really tight game which we won 3-2 with Felix scoring a hat-trick! Our final group game was against Leicester Grammar School. We knew the pressure had ramped up and we really needed our whole squad to come to the fore. Hugo, Tom, Jacob and Conrad were particularly needed in the break-down and rucks. Strong running from Finley and Charles got us out of some tight situations as we defended for our lives. We won 2-1 with Felix storming through several tackles to score spectacular tries.

For the first time ever, we had reached the unofficial ‘final’ and played against the most successful team from the other group. We were pitted against Ratcliffe College, yet another team with a fine prep school rugby history. Our boys were battered and bruised and it needed some fine tackling from Henry and Felix to keep us in the game against a quality side. Against such opposition, it needs every player in the squad to play to their maximum and we tackled and rucked with enormous bravery and ferocity. After a barnstorming run from Felix, Oli scored a try and we were in the lead. It didn’t last long though and Ratcliffe equalised. Alex stormed through the defence, ran thirty yards and narrowly missed scoring as he was forced into touch. We were under enormous pressure and Oli put in tackles that were simply phenomenal. We entered the last minute and the game was on a knife edge. After several tackles from all of our players, Oli evaded about five players, broke away and scored a try with the last action of the game, what a captain’s performance with two tries in the ‘final’. Rugby is 100% a team sport and we needed all our players to rise to the occasion and it was fantastic to see them celebrating at the end. Felix was named Denstone’s Player of the Festival after scoring eight incredible tries.

Five matches played – five wins - what an amazing day for the U10 team and Denstone rugby!

Results:-

Group stage:

Elms 1 - Denstone 2

Nottingham High School 1 - Denstone 3

Birkdale ‘B’ 2 - Denstone 3

Leicester Grammar School 1 - Denstone 2

‘Final’

Ratcliffe College 1 - Denstone 2

Player of the Festival: Felix H

A Bettaney