BERFC U15s vs Chess Valley

By Yunus Yuhanger ( U15 Player )

Chess valley certainly looked bigger than they I remember. However initially only having 13 men there were talks of alternative arrangements, but with 5 mionutes to go they managed to scrape 15 together . With George Sturley scoring in the first few minutes Barnet looked to be the stronger side, it was nice to see a change from the old problem of Barnet still sleeping in the first 5 minutes. With George Fishpool scoring a few minutes later we were comfortably sat in the driver's seat. A series of injuries for the Chess boys resulted in us playing with 13 men with Barnet dutifully matching the Chess Valley numbers. Also, a change of boots for Cameron McNeil led to his performance rocketing up (definitely not biased)

In the second half, despite being 2 down Chess Valley fought back hard against Barnet but ultimately George Fishpool went over again after slipping through so many tackles like rugby’s Houdini. ( He’s called fish for a reason ) .After another chess injury there were more talks as we had to play with 12 players , so we were left with gaps in our defence which Chess took advantage of, eventually scoring a try in the corner, Barnet came back with an excellent phase where Cameron stole the ball in our 22 and ran it up to their 5m line before shipping it along the line to Parsa Mohajer to Josh BG who scored the last try of the day.

Man of the match went to Cameron ( obviously thanks to my boots) and honourable mentions went to Houdini, Leevin and George Sturley.

Coaches Notes – Obviously being down on numbers made it a difficult day for Chess but respect to their lads for making a great game of it . Special mention to their 8 , 13 , and 10 all of who were superb . In fairness both teams were quite evenly matched but Barnets hands were better . On Barnet’s team its hard to look past the superb game Fish had today , his speed and commitment were too much for chess as was the dogged determination from Cameron who made so much of barnets ground today . There was good support and handling by Barnet and some great try saving tackles from Callum and Reece . We need to work on our line outs but that might be due in part to the ball in the face that Harry received squewing his vision ;)

It didn’t go un-noticed that the Chess coaches were unhappy with some of the Refs decisions today but given that Barnet had 8 penalties awarded against them ( vs 0 for Chess ) it looked like a pretty well managed game from the sidelines .It was particularly nice to see both parent groups watching together . We look forward to seeing Chess again in January .