Under 16’s Italian Tour

Thursday 14th April 2005

Droitwich u.16 took a tour party of 70 players and supporters to vist Italy and play 4 games in basing themselves in glorious VENICE, scheduling matches against Rugby Casale u.17 and Bourklini School Parma u.17 for the GOLD squad and the Italian U.17 Champion Club Petraca in Padova also the 3rd rated Italian U.17 Gran Rugby in Parma.

The matches commenced with the GOLD squad playing in the VENICE village of Casale, this proved to be a brillaiant opener to the tour, a very big and strong Casale side giving and asking no quarter under the floodlights of Casale, making for an excellent game, but GOLD’S stubborn defence and speedy backs enabled the tour to get off to a flyer with a 24-5 win.

Day 2 began with a marathon coach journey of 3 hours to the magnificient city of Parma. The 1st game of the double header played at the Training Ground of Top Italain club Gran Rugby, was the GOLD’S verses Bourklini School U.17, after a very competitive and difficult opening 20 minutes the boys settled down to play with style, speed and flair – which they have displayed throughout the season- winning a very entertaining game 55-0.

The 2nd game was the introduction on tour for the all conquering Blacks side verses Gran Rugby (who included 4 Italain U.17 international players) also last season Gran defeating the squad in a very exciting game 10-5, the blacks were determined to remove this scar from their otherwise outstanding record, TROUNCED a very good Gran side 47-7 (with the opposition being awarded a very dubious penalty try). the celebrations after the games was somewhat excitable to say the least, as the GOLD squad had completed there tour undefeated scoring a massive 79 points and only conceding 1 try.
Pressure was now firmley fixted on the BLUE RIBBON match verses Petraca u.17 Italian National champions, to attempt to bring home an U.16 squad undefeated record.

The BLACKS arrived to be informed their hosts had included their 6 Italain International players, that they had not lost a home fixture for 3 years and were undefeated in the last 12 months OH DEAR!!

Tension during the pre-match warm ups for both sides was incredable, the game was not a pretty specticle as both packs hammered into one another and the half time score of 0-0 reflected this, infact the nearest anyone came to scoring was a 40 metre penalty kicks for the BLACKS right on half time unluckily just drifted wide.

The second period followed the pattern of the 1st until very late in the game Petraca broke the deadlock scoring a penalty kick in front of the posts 0-3. then a sustained period of pressure from the BLACKS eventually resulted a line out and outstanding forward driving maul allowed Hooker Mohsen Yafai to score out wide 5-3. with seemingly no time left to play both sides had 1 further opportunity to win the game but once again outstanding defence snuffed out the chances. The game ending 5-3 in the DROITWICH boys favour, you could feel an explosion of emotion from players and supporters alike, incredable?

All the players and supporters celebrated the wonderful acheivement of both sides, with the amazing statistic in 4 games only 1 team had crossed the line.

Presentations were made to CENTRE PAUL BURTON and NO.6 JAMES OWEN as players of the tour for the GOLD and BLACK sides respectively.

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