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The Year 8 Rugby team attended the Hampshire RFU tournament held at Southampton RFU. The festival was attended by 27 schools across Hampshire and the weather held out for some fantastic rugby to take place.

Mayfield was placed into a tough pool to begin the day with the highlight being Mayfield v Ringwood school. Mayfield went into an early lead with Darius Gates showing great speed to run the length of the pitch to score in the corner. Mayfield defended superbly with some big tackles coming from Tommy Jerome and Connor Jeffery, but unfortunately Ringwood put us under immense pressure and were rewarded when they crashed over the line in the final minutes to even the scores.

1st Pool Results:

Mayfield 0- 5 Cams Hill

Mayfield 0- 5 Island Free School

Mayfield 0- 15 Kings School

Mayfield 5- 5 Ringwood

 

After Lunch the pools were re-seeded based on the mornings results.

2nd Pool Results:

Mayfield 20- 0 Henry Court

Mayfield 25- 0 Applemore college

Mayfield 15- 15 New Forest school

 

The highlight was our last game against the New forest school. Mayfield could not afford to lose as this would have cost us winning the Pool.

Mayfield conceded a try to start which was a wakeup call to the team. Mayfield then quickly settled with some outstanding play by Harvey Chapman stepping his way through the opposition only to get tackled short of the line. Shortly after Darious Gates again showed that he can’t be caught on a rugby pitch by scoring twice in quick succession to put Mayfield 10- 5 up. It was then New forest turn to put the pressure back on Mayfield and with some poor decision making and a

failed kick to touch Mayfield then found themselves down 10-15, quickly conceding two trys. Mayfield was then under pressure for a period and it took Jacob Leaver and George Kirby to put in some big tackles to knock them back. New forest lost control of the ball and excellent tidying up by Jonty Pearson was able to pass the ball to Darius Gates who did what he had done all afternoon and ran the length of the pitch to complete his hattrick.

This meant Mayfield finished the day on top of the pool due to the New forest losing to Henry Court.

The focus for the festival is that the players participating were having fun, learning and developing their understanding of rugby and to leave feeling positive about the game which I believe was certainly the case.

The Core Values of rugby were at the centre of the festival (Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship) which were reinforced throughout the day and on the spot prizes were awarded for examples of these cores throughout the day, which several Mayfield students were identified for demonstrating these.

Overall an excellent performance from Mayfield and the students did the school proud and put us on the rugby map within the county.

Mr Campbell

My Happy MindArtsmark Gold Award