U12 Head Coach Tom Bolland, reports:

The U12’s hosted Edenbridge for a friendly match. In light of our team's first taste of success following Friday Night Lights at Trinity, there was a sense of nervousness amongst the team with mutterings of, ‘Will we play that well again?’ - it was a good feeling and energy. We had a sharp training session with specialist coach and 1st XV regular, Noah Clay building attack skills to break gain line.

Edward Hardy was named captain after his recent talismanic hard runs, the boys called their own huddle and reminded each other of what they were all going to bring to the match.

We had a tough start with Edenbridge coming out the traps hard and fast. After some heroic defence with low hard hits, Edenbridge managed to breach the ‘Warly Wall’ and score a try. Our now more mature squad did not let their heads drop, rather were spurred on to deliver some revenge. Warlingham hit back though multi-phase ‘blue / Bosch’ pods, then saw the space and called out to our speedsters, with a fantastic defence splitting run from Christiaan Hanekom for our first try. Ruthless defence on both sides saw the score tied at 1-1 at half time.

The second half started with the same intensity as Warly built up multi-phase play and territory with some hard runs from Charlie Clegg and Edward Hardy, leading to Edward bulldozing over from five metres out. The breakdown was a battle ground but we had our SAS enforcer of Joel Smith stealing and keeping ball. With the majority of possession, we worked up the field again for Luke Di Prinzio to burst over from close range.

Edenbridge did not give up and ran some great lines but defensive commitment, especially from Fabio Savastano with flying try-saving tackles and big hits, kept Edenbridge at bay. In the dying seconds their winger scored a great solo try for the final whistle to settle a 3-2 victory for Warlingham. Very proud coaching team of a squad that is building confidence week on week.

Next week we head to The Values Cup at Old Reigatians.