Watford lose to league leaders

Watford U14s travelled to Radlett on Sunday to play league leaders Tabard, with all of their 21 players available for the first time this season. The weather was really poor with the rain pouring down for the entire match, but this didn't detract from what was a very good competitive game of rugby.
Although Tabard thoroughly deserved to win the match (37-12), there were lots of positives for the Watford boys to take from the game and with two league games still left and also the second round of the County Plate next week, there is still plenty to play for.
I won’t go through the whole team or the match, but I will mention just a few of the good points that the coaches noticed during the game.
We didn’t have our usual slow start where we can be 7 points down before we start playing, instead we were competitive from the kick off making Tabard work hard for the ball in the early rucks. The set pieces went well with us winning a fair amount of possession, even after completely changing the front row at halftime. The overall tackling is improving with some great tackles from the flankers and backs. It was good to see Connor getting really stuck in on his return from injury, and Harry made a very impressive debut in the second half. It was particularly pleasing to see that the boys never gave up and scored the final try of the game with a series of pick and drives, something we have been doing in training the last couple of weeks.
There was also some very positive feedback from the Tabard coaches and the Ref after the match, with comments about how disciplined and competitive Watford had been. If we can continue to improve and play with this level of commitment over our remaining two league games, then there is no reason why we shouldn’t avoid relegation.