Perthshire Festival Report

Pool B Games

Perthshire 2 - 5 Ellon
Edgy start and there wasn’t a great deal happening for the opening couple of minutes, but we soon got going, opened up the legs and it was a comfortable enough start.

Watsonians 2 - 4 Ellon
We were expecting this to be our toughest pool game as we watched them play their first game which was very impressive. Played a wide passing game against Stirling. It was a much harder game than the first, they were a robust team, and didn’t miss too many tackles.

Stirling 0 - 6 Ellon
A comfortable enough game particularly in the 2nd part of it. Stirling weren’t rucking much and preferred to play a very loose offloading game throughout. When we set up a few rucks and got into some patterned play it was their downfall. Stirling reinforcements didn’t provide any improvement and led to a knock on and loose passes to gift us the final 2 trys!

A perfect start, winning the group, meaning we would face the other winners of pool A and Pool C to decide 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

Jed Forest 2 - 0 Ellon
Hot of the heels of the “war of curry” here last year, this time it was an all out rucking war! In wide play Jed Forest were playing a nice game, very similar to ourselves, a nice mixture of up the middle, passing to edge, and they were very well organised. The speed of their ruck was the difference between the teams. It was actually incredible for kids that age to latch on so quickly. Our boys stood back for half a second while they were firing into rucks in milliseconds. Some was legal, some was on the edge, but it was effective. Good rugby teams and good players will always push the boundaries, they starved us of possession for long periods and turned us over way too many times. Maybe a short half time would have helped us but in these short tournament formats we need to think on the pitch and readjust quicker and accordingly. This Jed team hasn’t been beaten in 3 years and I think they were glad the game was over, their coaching team said they had not been pushed that hard in a very long time. Given these guys live and play festivals in what is a hotbed of Scottish Rugby this can only give us huge encouragement.

Dundee Eagles 3 - 3 Ellon
They were quite a small but very slippery team. Got one decent well worked score against us but some very disappointing missed tackles out in wider channels let them get 2 more very easy try’s. We managed to claw the score back to a draw and I think 30 seconds more and we would have won the game. Dundee were very happy for the final whistle.

2nd Place Overall
3 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss (and based on points difference) we finished 2nd overall behind Jed who were a worthy winner. Coming second in this festival is an outstanding achievement and quite frankly trumps everything we have done this year, given the quality of teams there, and how we were placed much lower last year.

Player of the Day - Hugo
The same 3 names from last week were doing the rounds here, Struan, Cameron M, and Hugo with all 3 in the top 3 scorers and I would expect the same for tackle count. But Hugo was all over the park yesterday, tackling, distributing, and scored double the amount of the next guy. More importantly in games where we had lots of pressure his individual error rate was exceptionally low.

Most Improved - None
Steady up tick for a few guys this week, on the back of some great performances last week. Nothing stand out to specifically mention and just hoping for more of the same at Deeside this Saturday. Well done team! ?