BERFC U16 vs Westcliff

And indeed it was ......

West cliff were kind enough to step in this morning to give us a game at short notice and given it was Essex DPP fielded a mixed A/B side . The temperature had dropped dramatically but given all the rain their pitches were in fantastic condition .

Westcliff were already running drills as the Barnet squad arrived in dribs and drabs and they clearly looked up for it .

The first half saw some excellent rugby from both sides with Barnet pressuring the Westcliff defence for about 6 minutes before Barnet were finally able to break through at 12 minutes with a great try from Dylan Jimni . Leevin Nigimbi ran some great lines and thankfully looks to be back to full match fitness .

Other notable performances in the half came from Kacper Salik who's tackling today was superb and to Allessandro MacGuiness who thought that he had scored a great try before the ref decided there has been a knock on . Tommy at 10 also played a great half and greatly impressed the westcliff coaches who couldn't believe he was only 14.

Its fair to say that the Westcliff boys play a punchy game and really wanted it this morning . Barnet found this hard to handle and Westcliff got under their skin and at half time we had stopped playing the sort of rugby we have come to expect from Barnet .

The coaching team chose to make 6 substitutions at half time to give everyone a run out and calm the game but in retrospect this might not have been the right decision in that frustrations started to boil over and the game became frankly a bit of a bun fight . Whilst captain Dylan did try and calm things down with the ref this only seemed to make the situation worse .

Westcliff capitalised on the weaker barnet side and their "relentless" phases put them well ahead at the final whistle .

Even when the tunnel was done Barnet were still rattled some of the lads behaviour didn't represent Barnet's normal understanding of the core values of the game .

Thanks again to Mark and Alan at Westcliff for giving us a great ( hard ) game .

In the absence of a player of the day Captain Dylan Jimni named Kacper as player of the day for his great tackling . Other mentions for Oli , Ed and Al for stepping up against a difficult oppo and to Robert who ended up in A&E today with suspected broken ribs which illustrates the intensity of the game !

Onwards and sideways !