Under 8's win the Romford festival

It was a hot sunny morning in April and with half the team still away on Easter holidays we set off for the Romford festival.

The pressure was on us as the last two years the under eights have won a trophy at this festival and we knew it would be hard.

We had four games in the group stage, Wanstead, Witham, Woodford A and Wanstead. After a great warm up we played Wanstead and won with a 10:5 victory. Then came Woodford A a team that we had played and lost to only two weeks before! On one of our best performances of the day the game finished as an 8:8 draw. Our third game against Witham was another close game ending in a 9:7 win for Burnham. Our final game against Wanstead we had managed to put together a very good defence turning the ball over time after time moving forward as a team and putting a lot of pressure on our opponents winning the final group game 7:2.

This meant that we drew our group with Woodford A both winning three games and drawing one. On tries scored we topped the group and went into the final to play Bancroft who are always a good team.

The Burnham under Nines did not have a game and came to give their support in the final. We lost the toss and Bancroft came at us fast but our line held and although we got pushed back and back we managed to turn over the ball. With some quick feet Paddy took the ball and ran the length of the pitch to score the first try. Bancroft came back at us strongly and thanks to the whole team holding the line they managed two seven tag turnovers to get us the ball. These turnovers game us the edge to win the game 8:6.

Our player of the tournament was Kieran Harris for great support play, tagging and scoring seven tries.

In total our team scored 40 tries and while tries are great it is the whole teams defence that won the day so well done to the whole team George Hutcheon, Patrick Smyth, Oliver Bennett, Keiran Harris, Thomas Courts, Thomas Griffin, Declan Horton, Nathan Flynn.