Match Report - U8s at Hartlepool Festival

Today we had the pleasure of taking two teams up to the Hartlepool coast for their festival, a light breeze, sun and blue skies a far cray from the freezing rain that left some of ours in tears a year ago!

Again we split the squad into whites and blues and went our ways through the festival against a wide and varied range of opponents.

DMP Whites were the on form side from the off, unbeaten in all four of their games, some emphatic wins that led to many positive comments from the opposition coaches, their results were;

• DMP Whites 7 vs 4 Billingham
• DMP Whites 7 vs 2 Hartlepool Rovers
• DMP Whites 7 vs 1 Acklam
• DMP Whites 10 vs 2 Yarm

Mowden Blues had a slower start, playing 7 aside on narrow pitches possibly not giving them as much room as they are used to, but half the battle in Rugby is adjusting to your surroundings and conditions. Once warmed up they pushed on with some impressive support play creating tries, and defending to the point of turnover on more than one occasions. The culmination was a narrow loss to Durham A in their final match of 5, tired and emotional on all sides (and that was just the coaches) but a hard, fair game that shows how much some are ready to move up to contact next year. The game ended with both teams taking a shirt together in a huddle and some great positive feedback to all players from the Durham coach, rightly pointing out that these guys have got a lot of games against each other ahead of them in their careers, and that they'll likely end up best of friends - off the pitch!

The DMP Blues results were;

• DMP Blues 4 vs 6 Houghton
• DMP Blues 7 vs 5 Redcar
• DMP Blues 8 vs 2 Durham C
• DMP Blues 8 vs 6 Darlington
• DMP Blues 5 vs 7 Durham A

The players of the day were chosen by our travelling support on the day and they picked Sam Eglington (DMP Whites) and Cole Flisher (DMP Blues) who managed and impressive double hat-trick in one match, well played all.