After a shaky start with Garioch scoring first early on, it took the lads a little while to get going before they eventually scored 2 tries towards the end of the first half. Ryan scored first in the left far corner just minutes after being held up in the same corner. Then Seb scored to the right of the posts just before half time with a conversion from Dylan - 5-12 @ HT

But....... somewhere in between Ryan and Seb's try, the game was turned by a huge clear out by Ruairi. It was exactly the demonstration of how we should be treating anyone who threatens to jackal OUR ball and the coaches used this to fire the lads up and start really protecting OUR ball. The clear out was awesome from Ruairi and the timing was awesome for the team - even with several factors against them on the pitch, they were now ready for the second half......

The team was freshened up and changed slightly with the change out of the subs coming on at half time - Angus, Dylan Wood and Finn came on and certainly looked to continue the intensity that had started to build. Looking at the timings, it was basically a try every 5 mins for Ellon U16s for the whole of the second half ;-)

First up was Hamish getting his try with a conversion from Sam. This was then quickly followed up 4 mins later by a trade mark Dylan J interception and try with him basically just falling over the line once he'd caught it - converted by Sam. 3 mins later and there was an excellent attack down the left wing with Aaron breaking through the tackles and heading towards the try line before a ridiculous sliding tackle with the feet to trip him up. Penalty Try and Garioch down a man.

A Garioch try at 54mins was then quickly followed up by Hamish to get his second try for the day. By this time Garioch were starting to look tired and when they gave away a penalty in front of the posts, Sam stepped up and bagged another 3 points for us. As a reminder to the lads, even a tired team can beat you, Garioch scored a late try and still fought to the end. Ruairi then went over for the last try of the day and went for the conversion himself - probably impersonating Owen Farrell whilst getting setup up added too much pressure and he just missed it. Good effort though Ruairi... :-)

An amazing match to watch and a great way to end the half way point of the league with this great bunch of lads sat on top of the table. Honourable mentions first go to Hamish - 2 tries and some solid defensive work this week, Great performance Hamish. Odhran seemed to be everywhere during the match and maintained his ever consistent bullet and jackal performance. Ras put in another really solid performance and is consistently turning up and playing well now as is Ruairi who turned the game with his huge clear out and and contested really well in the line outs. Aaron made some good strong runs today and put in his usual high standard of cover tackles. Sam played his first full game at 9 and was really busy all game which is exactly what we need from our SH. There's also an honourable mention to the whole front row this week - they really took onboard what we worked on in training about defensive structure and worked hard to get back into position all match which really helped strengthen our defence and the breakdown - Well done Chaps

So our MOTM this week is Tyler - he really stepped up in defence with some solid tackles and Jackals managing to steal their ball several times. He also broke their defensive line several times making some great yards up the pitch and just generally being a menace around the breakdown. Very well played Tyler.

As ever, it was really hard for us coaches to pick the MOTM as all the lads played well. We've a few weeks break from matches now and revert back to focusing on attack. See you on on Tuesday for S&C ;-)