Streatham-Croydon U13s win against a dogged Sutton & Epsom U13B side

After defeat in the Treasurer's Cup two weeks ago, the U13s bounce back to win against Sutton & Epsom U13s in the Treasurers Shield.

The best Mother’s Day gift that the u13s could give their mothers who had given up their Sunday morning to support them was to claim a semi-final win against Sutton & Epsom U13B. And that’s exactly what they did. In so doing, they will play the winners of the other semi-final between Old Cranleighians and Richmond U13s for the shield.

The boys started with good intent playing a direct style of rugby and scored in the 1st minute through a 1st phase move where Joseph Gallon returning to play at scrum half (after a trip to see Scotland beat England) passed to Jaden Wallace-Anderson on the left wing who then ran 60m breaking tackles along the way to the first of his 6 tries. Joseph had clearly taken his inspiration from Greig Laidlaw.

Less than a minute later Sutton & Epsom lost the ball from the restart and the forwards led by Andi Aheto, EJ Lukete and Dicken Maremootoo won the ball back by counter rucking strongly and from the next few phases, the ball was shipped out to the wing and Jaden finished off with his second try.
That sprung Sutton & Epsom into action and scored two tries of their own. The game remained all square and was evenly contested until the stroke of half when Jamal Reid was on the end of a James Ward clearance kick. He ran 75m to score his try.

In the second half a breakdown in communication between Diran and his scrumhalf led to a dropped ball over the try line which Sutton & Epsom pounced upon to even up the game.

The next 10 minutes was arguably the most competitive period of the game. Good defence from both sides and the odd forward pass prevented either score line from being troubled. However on the stroke of 40 mins, good forward pressure led to Jaden having some space to build up speed and scored the defining try.
On the restart Diran Oresanya’s perfectly weighted dropkick was caught by EJ Lukete who offloaded to Ciaran Davis who then passed to Ryan Kenningham who then found Lorenzo Zilli who made the telling pass to Jaden who then ran his 5th try. By the time the final try was scored, the game was won.

Special mentions go to the rest of the team – George Adshead, Jayden Whyte, Patrick Craig, Fergus Brennan, Nigel Seruvange, Finlay McDermott, and Aathi Thiru-Lewis as they all had a part to play in the victory.

Roll on the final.