South East Prep School Barbarians
Will and Danny at Henley RFC
Congratulations to Will Saunter and Danny Starr who last week represented Colet Court as members of the South East Prep Schools Barbarians. Will and Danny were chosen to play in a tournament against the three other national divisions, the West, the Midlands and the North. Below is Will’s account of their first match against RGS, Wycombe.
On Monday 21 November, Danny Starr and I drove to Henley to play with some of the best prep school rugby players in the south east of England against Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. The match was to kick off at 7:00pm under floodlights, which was very cool.When we arrived, we warmed up, getting to know the rest of our team better as we did so. This was followed by a team talk in the changing room before we ran onto the pitch to play.
I started on the bench, and watched Dannny make a few rampaging runs at outside centre. There was one brilliant moment where he sold a dummy, handed off his man, stormed thirty metres up the pitch and was unlucky not to get an offload away when he was finally caught. It was amazing to think that he plays prop for Colet Court. The Barbarians seemed to be on top and we were unlucky to come in at half time with the score still at 0-0.
For the second half, Danny came off and I was asked to play on the wing, a position not too familiar to me. About ten minutes in, we had a scrum on their five metre line. Our number 8 picked up the ball from the base of the scrum and dived over the line for our first try. It was nearly five minutes from the end of the game when I received the ball with a bit of space on the wing. I stepped my opposing player, sprinted the remaining ten metres before diving over the line to score. Our kicker converted to make the score 12- 0. There was a nerve wracking last few minutes after they had got a score back, but we defended bravely and the match ended 12-5.
