Thurrocks Under 13s faced off against a romford side on Sunday having lost out earlier in the season.

That game had seen torrential downpours, but this time, the sun was shining on Ts young guns. A draw last time out against Chingford and some improved performances over the last few months has seen the confidence grow in a number of these youngsters and they showed that improvement again as Will kicked the game off.

A great chase and tackle from Connor allowed Joe P the chance to jackal over and win the ball for his team. A quick pass to Junior saw the powerful runner take the ball on a few meters before finding Thomas on the left wing. From half way, there was no stopping Ts try machine as he sped away from the cover defence for his 20th try of the season in the first minute of the game.

This seemed to shock the visitors, but they came back well and despite some great tackling from Aston, Romford used the overlap well to score the equaliser.

Ts tactic of long kickoffs was paying dividends with some great kicks from Will and Sonny putting the away side under constant pressure, thanks to the chasing of Jaxon, Connor & Thomas.

Our scrums were the best they have been this season too, with the front row of Benji, Jacob & Joe H causing massive issues for Romford in the first half while the added power of Sonny, Junior & Joe P meant we had a solid platform to play from with co-captain Lewis keeping the tempo high.

Our next try came from another kick chase. Quick ball allowed Jaxon to feed the ball to Will, who put a great kick down field. A superb chase from Thomas saw he hustle the Romford player in to touch.
Quick thinking from co-captain Lewis saw he take a quick pass to Junior. Junior has started to add to his attacking game lately and dived through the Romford defence to put Ts back in front

The rest of the half was neck and neck as Ts solid defence kept Romford at bay with some great hits coming in from the likes of Sonny, Connor and New boy Harvey on his debut. Eventually thie visitors grabbed another equaliser as their flyhalf dummied through to score.

Again, Ts came back strongly and Harvey got his first taste of the action. Receiving the ball in his own half, the centre smashed through would be tacklers as he stormed up the pitch, only stopped by a high tackle. From the resulting penalty, Jaxon threw a fine pass to Junior. Roughly 40 metres out, the powerful Second Row ran around the Romford defence, swatting away the last defender before dotting down in the corner for another deserved try. This put Ts in the lead at half time.

Romford kicked off the 2nd half and kicked deep. The ball went straight to Oliver who managed to header the ball up, catch it and go on a great run down the left hand wing. Freddie came on for his debut and showed what an addition he will be to the team with some great carries and solid work in the scrums.

For how well Ts played, Romford weren't out of this game and they grabbed another try to level the scores for the 3rd time in the game. A slight knock on was missed by the referee but they visitors finished the try well in the corner despite the last ditch effort from Charlie to stop the attack.

Romford seemed to have the wind in their sails as they then attacked again. They looked odds-on to score before Thomas managed to drag the attacker down at the last minute. Enter Connor, who managed to steal the ball before carrying into the Romford defence on his on 5 meter line. Somehow, Connor came out the other side and the speedster had too much gas for the Romford defence as he glided by 4 attempted tackles to sprint the length of the field to score the "try of the season" so far.

Great control from our other co-captain, Ben saw Ts dominate the rest of the game on both attack and defence. Albert had some great runs and his line speed kept the Romford attack in their own half.

The last 10 minutes saw a host of handling errors from our visitors meaning a lot of scrums for us. The front row of Darius, Jacob & Freddie kept up the solid foundation of the 1st half as the clock ticked down. Time had run out for Romford and our boys took home a deserved win as the wild celebrations started following the final whistle.

The boys have shown great improvement over the last couple of weeks and will be looking to finish the season off strongly.

They have a week off this week before we welcome Rochford to Oakfield for our final home game of the season on the 16th April