Saturday morning saw the team saying good bye to our hosts at Prior Park with flowers for the House Mistress and kind words from her as to how well the boys had behaved. After killing a few hours shopping in Bath and another trip to the world champion pizza parlour (highly recommended with great customer service) we were off to Avonvale RFC. Avonvale are a small club just outside Bath who had done us the honour of giving us a match to round off our tour.
With Avonvale having teams at all age levels on a single year basis i.e they have u8, 9, 10, 11, 12 etc they did us the favour of matching our team make up with u10s, 11 and 12 in their side. The match was to be played as a 12 aside game unlike the usual 11 our boys are used to and 4 quarters of 15 minutes. This meant that though they would play the same amount of time they are used
to in their tournaments in Spain there wouldn't be the usual long breaks between matches. This was going to be a tough ask for our boys.
Who were we kidding! Our boys started the match like children possessed. Passing the ball with skill, tackling anything that moved and the results soon started to show. Our guests were shell shocked when we went into a two try lead in the first quarter. The second saw Avonvale come back strong pulling a try back but then Gibraltar scored the try of the day taking the ball from close to the corner by their own try line to score in the opposite corner after about four phases of play and the ball being passed the width of the pitch three times. The half finished 3-1 to Gibraltar but the signs of cracking were creeping in and Avonvales better discipline started to bring territory which was causing Gibraltar to defend heroically.
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