Deal and Betteshanger Lions U9s roar into semi-finals

Deal and Betteshanger Storm Through to the Semi Finals of the East Kent Tournament!

On first seeing the group we had been put into, the coaches quickly start referring to it as the "Group of Death"! We had Medway, Canterbury and Sittingbourne in our group, all very strong rugby sides.

Our first game was versus Medway. Our boys and girls lined up and I knew within the first 30 seconds we had the measure of this team. All the extra tackle and passing practice the team has been putting in on a Wednesday paid massive dividends.We took early control of the game and never let is slip running out 4-1 winners. Sebastian Powell must have a mention here as being the scorer of all 4 tries!!

Next up was Canterbury, a team we are traditionally very closely matched with. We let our concentration slip in the first half, dropping 1-0 down. A good half time talk by Mat Halpin and Aaron Mitford got the team concentrating again for the second half. Two great individual tries by Nathan Powell and Finley Wilson put us in the lead. We then defended until the final whistle ending up 2-1 winners.

Our final group game was against Sittingourne. Again, the team started the match like their first game and dominated immediately. Sittingbourne were no match for our tackling and running game and we quickly racked up a good lead. Eventually running out 5-2 winners, with tries from Finley Wilson, Will Price, Jonny Lees, Finley Theaker and Sebastian Powell ! ( at least I think those were the try scores, I go so excited at this point I lost the ability to keep notes!!)

So...........Deal and Betteshanger were group winners, undefeated against 3 very good teams.

Next was the quarter-finals. We quickly discovered we would be coming up against Thanet! This has been our bogey team of the last 2 seasons, having never managed to beat them. However, the team were up for the challenge today! In a very scrappy game we defended magnificently! I lost count of the number of times I saw a Thanet player being held up just short of the line. The ref also had a tough time as there were many, many dangerously high tackles coming in. The ref had to start having the Thanet coach sub his players to try and control the high tackles coming in! At full time, we were 1-1 with Thanet. So, it was to extra time we went! At the end of extra time we were 2-2 with Thanet. So, to extra extra time we went. We were still 2-2 with Thanet. So, this game had to be decided with a coin toss. Irrelevant of how the toss would end, i knew our team had won a massive moral victory in the way they had continued to play good quality rugby during this match. As it was, we won the toss! through to the semi-finals!

We went straight from this epic quater-finals into a semi-finals against a well rested Canterbury side. Despite a valiant effort by the whole team, with a resurgence in the second half, we just didn't have the energy to fully compete with Canterbury, finally loosing to Canterbury 5-3.
As a coach I could not have been prouder of my players! They gave everything they had, played fantastic rugby as they have been coached and were without doubt the best sporting side at the tournament, never letting themselves, their coaches or their club down!!!!