Following the success of winning the Northern Bowl regional final against Wirrall RFC on 26th March, the U17’s then travelled down to Stourbridge to take on Sutton Coldfield RFC in the North vs Midlands Bowl semi-final.

A hugely entertaining and hard fought competitive game between two well matched teams, played in glorious sunshine and a pitchside temperature of 23 deg. C – fitness and conditioning told in the end. Sutton Coldfield threw the kitchen sink at Mowden but the boys held firm, twice holding up Sutton on the try line and refusing to be steamrollered by the bigger side. The boys clinically took their chances and closed out the game to eventually emerge as 29-19 winners.

The prize for this victory was a place in the National Bowl final against Taunton RFC U17’s to be played on the plastic Sixways pitch at Worcester Warriors on Sunday 30th April.

But before the Bowl final, the boys headed over to the Ghent Festival of Rugby over the Easter weekend. An overnight ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam and a coach journey to Ghent saw us arrive in the very quaint town on Friday afternoon. A few ‘quiet’ beers on Friday night and the boys were up and at it on Saturday morning at the Festival.
We travelled all that way only to play one of our big rivals Penrith, together with South Woodham Ferrers, Cleckheaton and Oudenaarde Rhinos (local team) in our group. After progressing through our group relatively unscathed we then played Penrith again in the Cup semi-final winning the game with an injury time drop goal penalty.
Onto the final where we again played South Woodham Ferrers – another unbelievably tight game was all square at the end of normal time. Onto ‘golden point’ time i.e. first of any point wins the game – we camped in the Woodham half and when the opportunity came we again won the game with an injury time drop goal penalty.
So a very successful tour, appropriately celebrated by the parents and boys in Ghent on Saturday night – with even some of the dads (what goes on tour stays on tour) disappearing off to a Salsa bar in the early hours of Sunday morning to polish up their dance moves.

So onto the National Bowl final this coming Sunday.
For our last 3 Bowl games we have had long treks to Liverpool (twice) and Stourbridge – this time we are going to travel down to Worcester on Saturday after the 1st team game at the Arena.
We are taking a full squad of 22 boys together with a veritable army of 50 supporters – our hopes and confidence are high and we will certainly fly the flag for Darlington Mowden Park RFC and North East Junior rugby in general.

COME ON PARK !