After six weeks of training it was a first opportunity to see how the new rules would work for the U8’s. We did not attend the Woodbridge festival last year so it was also an opportunity to play against some Suffolk and Essex teams for the first time.

For a team that are normally slow starters, they came out of the blocks flying in our first game against the hosts. The game was a low scoring affair with Diss winning 4 – 2. The effort in defence to only concede two tries was fantastic and Diss were never less than two tries ahead. The new seven tags and then a turn over law is a great improvement as it really encourages the taggers to keep going.

Our second game was against Bury. This proved to be Diss’ best game of the day. Again the defence worked well against a talented attacking team but it was the forward play that really stood out. Diss were playing flowing expansive rugby, passing before being tagged and several of the tries were scored at the end of a four or five pass sequence. The game was always close with Diss winning 7 – 5.

Our third game was against the eventual joint winners Hadleigh. Hadleigh were a very strong, aggressive team with an interesting interpretation of the new going to ground laws with several Chris Ashton type tries being scored! To be fair to Hadleigh we never got close to them and they deserved their 3 – 6 victory.

The final group game was against Ipswich YM and was going to decide if we played off for 2nd or 3rd place. This proved to be a constant end to end affair with Ipswich coming out on top by the odd try winning 5 – 6.

We finished the group joint second with Bury having both won and lost two games. Bury progressed to the plate final on tries scored so Diss had to settle for the 3rd place playoff in the Shield final against Colchester.
Not long after the game had started it stopped again for about 10 mins after Colchester used the tactic of injuring our top try scorer Charlie U (ok it was accidental!)
Colchester took a commanding lead at half time being 5 – 2 up. The second half display from the Diss team at the end of a long day was outstanding. They fought back to 6 – 6 before Colchester scored with the last play of the match to win 7 – 6.

The effort from all the team was outstanding with great attacking and defensive displays in every game. We look forward to the Bury festival next week and the fun that will bring.

Team Charlie W, Charlie U, Molly, Riley, James, Santos, Charlie N, Oliver and Will

M Windle 15Oct12