Unbeaten to date

The U16A St Bede’s won the Challenge Shield last week against STAC. It was well deserved and now the team enters the final stage of the season.

The team has gone through all pre-season and round-robin games undefeated. We set a goal early in the season to split the season into three parts. Part 1: learning and understanding our individual and team strengths and weaknesses . All the players had input into this, asking for upskilling (bringing in experienced coaches to help technique and game management) in certain parts of the game. Once we all had a clear, shared vision and sense of these strengths and weaknesses we introduced some structure and phase understanding in Part 2.

Along the way we have challenged ourselves and have been an inclusive team allowing all supporters and wider members of the team to be involved in what we have been trying to achieve.

The team now hits Part 3 - the fine tuning and final goal of making the final and winning it.

The young men knows that this comes about by doing the hard work at training, where we only train rugby. I told them at the start of the season fitness is a personal thing and as a coach I would be letting them down if we did fitness at training and not upskilling them in the game of rugby.

The game of rugby is very simple and we are lucky to have some very talented young men who could have played higher this season. The inside-backs provide clean and clear direction, giving our powerful midfield the opportunity to express themselves and give us key go-forward momentum which results in space with good width for a pace injection from our back-three.

The forward pack has focussed hard at set piece and with a lot of hard work, gives us a solid platform at scrum and with a very accurate lineout allows us to implement various options with great jumpers across the lineout. The loose forward trio has been menacing and constantly contesting rucks being a key to our game. Defence hasn’t had to be talked about too much as we believe it is an ‘Attitude’, which is a small thing that makes a big difference to our outcome each week

The team would like to thank Lejorben as our manager keeping us all in line and check each week also our band of supporters off the paddock, that are there to encourage us each week to achieve our results on the paddock .

Thanks to Mark Vanner for his time in the gym, guiding the young men through the process of understanding their bodies.

A big thank you to Mark Ealey for all his efforts to help with extra trainings and upskilling for our young men making them better Bede’s men on and off the paddock.

Not many weeks of rugby left so as a team we would like to wish all teams at St Bede’s the best no matter what the code, we hope they achieve the results that they deserve with the motto of our school the key to that ‘Fide et Opere’. 

Anthony Lawry