Junior rugby tour is a success

On Tuesday, March 12, Foyle & Londonderry College U14 rugby team left for Edinburgh for the school’s annual rugby tour guided by Mr Barnett, Mr Stewart, Mr Funston and Mr Orr.

We were all very excited and were looking forward to playing our matches, we had three fixtures organised, George Watson College, The High School of Glasgow and Edinburgh High School. As well as our rugby matches we had lots of other activities to look forward to.

We arrived at our hotel at around 5:30pm. That night was spent unpacking, having dinner and relaxing after our long journey.

It was an early night for all of us in preparation for our match the following day.

Sadly due to the horrible weather conditions in Edinburgh our first match against George Watson’s was cancelled, however we spent the morning having a fitness session on the playing fields outside Murrayfield followed by lunch and a light training session in one of the huge sports halls at George Watson School.

In the evening we went to a Bowling Alley, we challenged the teachers for a game of pool but they declined in case they lost to the team. A very enjoyable start to the rugby tour.

On the third day our match against The High School of Glasgow was on.

We spent the morning relaxing and going to the swimming pool. Just after lunch we left for Glasgow with high expectations.

However, we conceded three tries early on in the match: in the second half our play improved, we conceded another two tries but a great scrum on their five metre line resulted in us winning it against the head and Killéne Thornton finished it off with a try. The final score was 37-5. The stand out performances came from Joel Smyth, Patrick Hughes and Kyle Scott.

The next day started with a slightly later breakfast, today’s match was against Edinburgh High School and we were all up for this game as we wanted to finish the tour off with a win.

We had arrived early and this allowed us to go out and practice some new moves that we would use in the match. Our match started very well and our new moves worked well.

We scored five tries in the first half, Conall Gill, Craig Logan and Stephen Stewart were among the try scorers.

In the second half we dropped off and conceded a try but we bounced back with two tries coming from Joel Smyth then Thomas Cole.

The stand out performance of this match was Stephen Stewart.

The activity that we were most looking forward to was the go-karting, this was great fun and everyone enjoyed it. When we got back to the hotel it was time to pack and tidy our rooms.

Saturday morning arrived and we were up at 6am to leave at 7am. Although we were all disappointed that our tour was over we all had a great time and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.