Yesterday afternoon we took the Year 9 rugby team over to KES Birmingham for their annual Greater Birmingham rugby competition. We started off by playing against the eventual winners KES Birmingham losing only 2 tries to 0, not a bad start considering it was our first ever full 15-a-side rugby game!

Game 2, wow, what a start…

straight from the kick off, the ball gets into the hands of Zahed who sprints 80m down the field beating at least 6 defenders showing great speed to score our first try of the day. The Fairfax coach, who was refereeing, just looked at me shaking his head. He was as baffled as I was! KESH celebrate like we have won the World Cup! Unfortunately, the rain came down heavily along with 3 tries from the Fairfax team. KESH 5 - 15 Fairfax. 

The next 2 games v Bishop Vesey and Five Ways showed great improvement, but their strengths prevailed without us getting on the scoreboard. The resilience from the boys couldn’t be faulted as they battled on making tackles all afternoon. 

The final game, what a contest. We faced Camp Hill. The game started evenly balanced before the one and only Nathanael stormed through their defence to score a wonder try to put us into the lead (he must have been cold/hungry/both!). Conditions were bleak but Camp Hill scraped a try in the corner after some heroic efforts to save the try by Ali, Jason and Seb. Time was against us with the final whistle approaching fast while Camp Hill piled on the pressure but the KESH defence held strong forcing them to make the error to end the game in a draw. The boys were relieved not to have lost all their games on a tough afternoon. Credit to them all for their efforts.