Darlington Festival provides a fitting end to the season

The Darlington Festival provided Sunderland Under 12s with a fitting end to their season.

This season has had it all, from games we'd rather forget, to victories to be proud of, spirited displays that have made us proud regardless of the result, at times joy and at others frustration for the fans on the side-lines. Fittingly, the Darlington Festival contained all of these things in one rollercoaster day.

We started the day with a game against Morley RFC. A very tough, well organised team. The West Yorkshire outfit were a credit to themselves and their coaches as they dominated forwards play and moved the ball out to their backs. Their backs were slick, quick runners of the ball, with plenty of backs moves at their disposal, chiefly orchestrated by a particularly good fly half, switches and loops opened up the Sunderland defence and created overlaps outside. Morley ran in 6 unanswered tries to take the game 35-0.

You would be forgiven for thinking that this might turn out to be one of the days we would rather forget. It quickly became apparent that Morley had the ability to terrorise most defences put in front of them on the day, and Sunderland had much more to give than shown in the first game of the group.

Sunderland’s second was a game against Bishop Auckland, and saw them start the way they had ended the first game, a little shell-shocked. Bishop put two tries over them in the first half. Sunderland rallied their troops at half time and although didn't manage to get a try in the second half they did have much of the ball, and territory, and did not concede again. A 10-0 defeat.

The third game, against Billingham, saw Sunderland again continue how they had ended their previous game, meaning this time they were playing with aggression, determination and a solid back line. Forwards were winning ball, backs were creating space and plenty of opportunities in attack. One attack resulted in a penalty, a quick tap and pass from Joe Whelan to James Graham and he crashed through the defence for his first try of the day. A second try came soon afterwards with James Graham turning the ball over from a maul and driving over the line, carrying half of the Billingham pack with him over the line as he went. A third try came in the second half when Sunderland recycled the ball from a ruck, and passed down the back line, through the hands of scrum-half Owen Charlton, to fly-half JJ Robins, inside-centre Cameron Holder picked out outside-centre James Savage who ran through for the try as Luke Gallagher supported James' run from the wing, just in case. A 15-0 victory.

Sunderland’s fourth game was against another of the Yorkshire based teams in the group, Richmond. Having watched their earlier games it was apparent that they were another strong and disciplined side. Buoyed by the performance from the previous game Sunderland carried on defending well, attacking with the ball in hand, and battling for everything at the breakdowns. Sunderland managed to all but subdue Richmond’s game and kept the score down to 1 try to nil. Although they didn't win the game the lads won the admiration of the Richmond coach who made inquiries to arrange a full fixture against Sunderland next season.

The final game of a long day saw Sunderland face Darlington-Mowden-Park in a hard fought game. Sunderland conceded two tries and scored one. DMP touched the ball down behind their own try-line after defending with their backs to the wall for much of the second half, resulting in a 5-metre scrum with the ball put in by DMP. After struggling to win scrums throughout the previous week, and first part of this week Sunderland’s scrum had been improving and the pack had begun to win more of the ball. Fuelled by the smell of the try-line Sunderland’s pack drove the DMP scrum backwards and stole the opposition scrum, giving scrum-half Joe Whelan the chance to dive over the line for the points. DMP almost grabbed one straight back but were forced into touch not far from Sunderland’s own try-line. The referee announced the final play of the game. With one more chance to level the score Sunderland managed to win the line-out, and release the backs again, passing well through hands and attacking at pace. After managing to find their way right back up to the DMP try-line the attack was stopped by some excellent tackling forcing Sunderland to spill the ball forward in the tackle and the final whistle was blown on another valiant effort.

Despite it being the final day of our season Sunderland learned a lot about themselves today, new player Ben Barnes has proved himself to be something of a natural born forward, causing the opposition pack problems in each and every game. Matthew Dyson discovered a taste for a new position playing at prop for much of the day. Dillon Skea showed some of the strong attacking runs that we’ve seen plenty of in training and Daniel Barker continued to improve his already impressive defensive displays of recent weeks with some textbook tackling.

As well as having everything from our season squeezed into one day, the festival served to highlight a few things which will be key to our summer. We know that we can win games when we win ball. We know that we can create tries when we create space out wide. When we’re applied and aggressive we've shown how competitive we can be. The day highlighted the strengths that we can build on, and the weaknesses that we have a summer to improve. The fact that all the lads seemed to have a great day, enjoying the rugby and the breaks in between together as a team means we can hope to rely on the same group of lads sticking together and developing with us for next year. The fact that the parents seemed to enjoy what turned out to be a very long day of rugby hopefully indicates the same thing.