Wednesday 05 August 2009

The CSG Old Boys competed in the Newquay Surf 7s on a weekend that couldnt be spoiled by the dodgy and wet weather.

A strong squad assembled for the 5 hour journey from basecamp to Newquay, with just one intention - to Live the Dream.

Opening our group games against last year's previous winners, Ronin Impact, our young squad started well against the physical and strong Ronin team. But we played to our strengths, maintaining a very open and quick game. But there was drama, as Kyle Davies recieved a red card, knocking us down to 6 men for the game, and his subsequent ban led to us competing the rest of the tournament with a squad of just 9 men! But we held on and played some strong rugby to beat Ronin Impact by 4 tries to 1 in a pleasing start to the tournament.

The rain fell hard for the second group game against Blaina RFC, and we had to dig deep and dog it out against a very awkward team to play 7s against. But we scraped through and won the game by 2 tries to win the group and progress to the knockout stages.

In the playoffs, we faced Worcester Trojans, and played our best 7s of the day. Everything went right and smooth as we played very attractive and entertaining rugby, and romped to a high-scoring victory against the young Trojans.

The quarter-finals meant going head to head with the Bootleggers, who had also impressed in previous games, but confidence was high in the Old Boys squad following our performances during the day. It was a very fast and physical game, which went right to the wire, but CSG Old Boys again showed some good stuff and held on to the end for a good victory.

And so we met our Welsh friends, the Akuma Smurfs, in the semi-final. Again the rains fell, and it was a scrappy start to the game for both sides. But to their credit, the class of the international and professional Welsh players in the Akuma side showed, and they started to play with dominance. But the Old Boys never gave up, and with just minutes to go, were only 10-7 down, until a breakthrough try for Akuma won the game, and signalled the end of the tournament for us. Akuma Smurfs then went on to win the final against Ronin Impact.

We'd like to pay credit to all teams that we played against, we certainly knew we'd played a bit the next day with all our aches and bruises, and everyone we played against won the respect of us for the style and way in which they played against us.

We had a fantastic weekend of great rugby, being a part of and seeing some quality 7s, and off-the-pitch, well...... we wont talk much about what went on off the pitch, but we certainly enjoyed and will be returning to Newquay again!!

So it leaves me to thank the organisers and officials of Newquay 7s for putting on such a succesful and quality tournament and weekend. We thouroughly enjoyed and were impressed with the professional manner in which the tournament was organised. We look forward to returnig again next year with intentions of improving even further on this years performance, and to do what we did at the Newquay 7s this year - Live the Dream.

Squad: Adam Jones (capt), Luke Marsh, Kyle Davies, Rhys Williams, Aled Lewis, Chris Keenan, Rhys Lane, Rich de Filippo, Mikey Davies, Dale Watts.