UEA Sevens Review

On paper, the Medics results from the tournament are pretty bad. We were comprehensively beaten in each match, but there is always more to the story and here we make our case.

The first match, against a team going under the name 'Duff Mivers', was a slaughter. General bewilderment, poor positioning, no sense of what to do with the ball when it arrived in our hands, and missing tackles, conspired to see us spend the entire match in our half, most notably in our own 22, but somehow despite it being the worst Medic's performance of the day, it was the defeat with the smallest margin.

Second up was the Village team, comprised largely of UEA players and one of our own committee members who shamelessly refused the passionate red of the Medic's Sevens kit in favour of the grey of his team last year. Gifted several free kicks on the half way line as a result of the Village kicker repeatedly failing to clear ten metres at the kick off, the Medics were finally able to play rugby in the opposition half and string together sufficient phases for attacks to build up. Some vastly improved rugby was played, but our undoing was in our inability to retain the ball in contact and a lack of set-piece proficiency, meaning that the Village could easily recover the ball and ship it out to their fast backs who ran in the tries.

Our final game was against another team comprised of UEA players, this time the Prader-Willi's. Again there was a step-up from the Medics, but unfortunately the PWs also had one or two quick backs and from the same mistakes, the tries came. The highlight of the day had to be in the closing stages of this match when Ben 'Skippy' Clayton scored a well taken try under the posts and slotted the conversion with a neat drop kick.

This tournament was the first competitive match for some in the squad, and others had not played for some time. The squad gelled very well and everyone had some game time. We had a great day out and all left thirsting for more. There is of course much work to be done, both in terms of fifteens and sevens, but there is now definitely the nucleus of a committed team. The level of the improvement from match to match on Saturday was quite something, and unfortunately not reflected in the results, but the fact that we kept our heads up and kept working at it is a positive.

Everyone enjoyed it and we as a squad are looking forward to the next opportunity to play together, and the training between then and now which will hopefully help us to make the scores look a little different next time we run out.

Well played to all the Medics squad and especially to Skippy for making sure our account was opened....