The available squads from Chelmsford U14s and Southend U14s took to the field on a damp but unfamiliarly calm and still day in Southend on the two nearest pitches to the airfield. Due to the number of players involved in Remembrance Sunday services at school, scouts, cadets, or otherwise, both squads were impacted with lower than usual numbers but managed to scrape together two teams each (Chelmsford U14s forming a Team Army and Team Navy) to play two 15-a-side half-matches on two adjacent pitches.

Following a minute’s silence, observed impeccably by all involved in the morning’s rugby across minis and youth, attention moved to what turned out to be four really well-fought matches. Kick-off was accompanied by drizzly conditions resulting in a wet, slippery ball - despite this, we moved the ball very well at times. Rucks were fiercely contested and improvements could be seen in our scrums where we pushed a strong Southend pack backwards almost every time. There were a few well-worked team tries, in particular the one finished by our winger in Team Navy's first match.

The first pair of matches ended with the same 19-5 scorelines in Chelmsford’s favour – the three tries to one were far from comfortable victories with a lot of defending to do against some very strong Southend runners. Our teams switched pitches for the second round of matches. Chelmsford Team Navy had a strong game and took control of the scoreboard early on, and despite conceding a try midway through, kept the tries coming with what turned out to be a dominant 24-7 win. On the other pitch, Team Army started their second match strongly but failed to convert early periods of pressure on the Southend try-line which they would later rue. Southend found a purple patch in the middle of the half, capitalising on a few penalty errors with a unconverted try in the corner and then running the resulting kick-off immediately back to take a 12-0 lead. This woke up Team Army who got a try back, but with the clock running out, it was too little too late.

Overall, this was a positive display from our boys, showing some progression from the first months of the season. Next up are the second-round matches of the Essex U14 Waterfall Cup with Team Lightning going away against Westcliff, and Team Thunder against Dagenham at Coronation Park.

Final scores:
Team Army:
19-5 win (3 tries to 1)
5-12 loss (1 try to 2)

Team Navy:
19-5 win (3 tries to 1)
24-7 win (4 tries to 1)

Overall combined: 67-29 win (11 tries to 5)