P5 160507 Mackie Tournament

A good rugby day for the team even though we lost 2x players very early in the tournament ending up with 7 players after the first game.

First game was against Deeside that we won 6-5. A tense game as both defences were a bit slow but our quality in rucking was better giving us a bit more edge and we scored one more try at the end of the game.

The second match was against Kinloss resulting in 7-2 for Ellon. This was a better performance in attack and we were able to exploit the slow defence. Our players showed great skill to beat the defence line. I was very pleased to see that behind the try scorer we had in some instances 2 support players to help if needed.

We then lost against Grammar 3-2 (who won the tournament). We played some good rugby, much improved in the rucking to pick up the ball (usually we are very good at clearing but forget to pick up the ball), but we struggled to find another gear to match the game speed.

Mackie we lost 2-6. Very few opportunities for us to score as Mackie was very good at keeping the ball for most of the match. The boys put some great effort in defence - some phases we spent a minute or more just tackling and counter rucking - but one missed tackle or being bit slow in defence or ruck was enough to break our wall.

The players worked very hard and I think they were expecting more but losing two players so early on was going to be a hard task to get through the group. Personally I am very proud of the quality of rugby we played,especially the side step, offload and tackle which is something that we have been working on during training in the past few weeks. Overall a tough but good day, we were very competitive in each game, making the other team work hard to cross our line.

Well done boys, thanks to the parents for your support.