Another beautiful Saturday morning, another great rugby match for our Kiwi Hawthorn champs!
The Panthers from Northern Rugby Club are a solid team, with some fantastic runners and great enthusiasm. We knew it would take a special effort to match them, especially with four of our regular team out: Mitchell, Abraham, Devonte & Darcy.
Fortunately our players are made of tough stuff: not for a second where any of them daunted by the challenge, quite the contrary, they couldn’t wait to play.
Fortunately too, Northern could spare a few of their best to join us in the first half and even better, three of our brave U7s stepped up and played the second half, making us and all the Club tremendously proud.
Elias, Luke and Henry brought all their natural skill, refined by hours of quality coaching and training and it paid off in a some great play and in particular, one beautiful run down the side-line and try to Elias.
Adonai was our Captain for the day and ran in some great tries too in his new set of Beauden Barrett boots (special import), before playing in the second half for our U10s!
Charlie was zagging and weaving and great in support, bravely tackling and saving tries.
Billy again brought his enormous work rate, ripping the ball off his opponents with such determination that at one stage a Northern player just handed him the ball (to which Billy, polite to the last simply said, ‘Thanks!’ and ran off to score a try). Is it too early to mention David Pocock?
And a massive game for Lucas who ran and ran this week and in the process learnt one of the most important lessons in rugby: the shortest way to the try line is straight up the middle! When the big man decided to stop trying to outrun the opposition and instead ran straight through the opposition, the tries rained down.
But the medal went to our newest team member and superstar: Ezekiel. With some beautiful dodging runs, tight passing and low, hard tackling, Ezekiel amazed the crowds that soon formed to watch. It’s not every day you get the medal in your first game of rugby, but something tells me, this is no everyday kind of player!
Well done Ezekiel!
Kiwi Hawthorn Junior Rugby 