YM Do Double

Winning the toss, Team Leader Jonny Godzicz chose to play uphill and into the wind for the first half on the compact Kestrels pitch.

Whilst Clacton had much of the territory in this game, the YM defence held resolutely and showed their ability to score from deep.

On the break early on, flanker Sam Burroughs made a break, passing to Billy Ratabalavu who made it to the Clacton 5 before offloading to the debuting Luke Bradley, allowing him to go over and score his first of the day.
The Conditions made converting difficult at best in the first half and Bradley missed his first conversion.

YM managed to build some pressure and after a scrappily winning a line out on the Kestrels 30, the ball made it's way to Danny Brown whose trademark hard running and offloading took the ball to Nathan Richards who darted through the Clacton defence and made the score 0-10 to YM.

Clacton’s only points of the game then came in the last 10 minutes of the first half. After a couple of penalties on the YM line, Clacton managed to bulldoze over and score their only try but miss the conversion.
After the restart, YM lost the ball and gave away a penalty in front of the sticks. As this was the was last play of the half, Clacton chose to go for points and converted from about 30 yards out and went into the half trailing 8-10.

Half time called for more of the same from the YM. They started brightly and the dominant YM scrum pushed Clacton off their own ball and the ball went loose. The livewire Joe Pearce, this time starting at 9 for the Hawks, grubbers the loose ball and wins the foot race against the Clacton players and manages to put the ball down before the ball goes dead.
Easier conditions in the second half allowed Luke Bradley to get his first conversion of the day. 8-17 to the YM.

Playing downhill with the wind on their backs, YM played some great stuff in the second half, making some nice breaks from midfield but just lacking that final bit of composure that will surely come with time.

An attempted driving YM line out in the Kestrels 22 goes slightly awry; the Hawks react and adapt quickly, this leads to Richards making a break but being stopped. Luke Bradley getting the ball and making his way through. He’s held up but manages to reach over then converts his own try by the foot of the posts, 8-24.

YMs fifth try comes after a great break and offload by fly half Adam Sawyer playing young Owen Steward in. Steward's excellent running and lines all game are finally rewarded with an excellent try from deep and his pace allowing him to go over in the corner.
A difficult kick meant that Bradley missed the final conversion.

YMs final try came after some pressure in the Clacton 22 and scrappy play with players getting white line fever. However after taking a second and getting back into shape the Clacton defence reacted to the YM structure but switched off to Pearce who scooted into for his 2 try of the game and the YMs final points of the day.

The result moved the Hawks into 2nd (more on that further on) within their conference, unsure on the Promotion/Relegation picture this season there's is a chance they could secure back to back promotions and gain promotion to EC1 next season.

Exciting times for a squad that is meshing experience in the likes of Godzicz, Brown, Alford and Sawyer with young players of great potential such as Pearce, Steward and the Hack Brothers very well.

Report by Jonny Godzicz

Hawks League Position

Due to the restructure of the RFU league pyramid it meant that even there was some administrative decisions made within EC2 in the close season. The decision was to make two Conferences (A&B) to allow for 15 fixtures to be played this season but also stopped teams like Colchester 4&5s and Ipswich 3&4 playing each other. Hawks are in Conference A with Ipswich 3s, Clacton Kestrels, Colchester 4s, Woodbridge 2s and Harwich 2s.

Conference B contained Ipswich 4s along with the other teams in the league table on GMS within EC2 south. The original intention last September was that each team would play ten games 'home' and 'away' within their own conference, plus another five games against sides in the opposite conference. Each side would therefore have 15 games over the course of the season, and it would also ensure that sides from the same club did not have to play each other.

Unfortunately, the demise of Ipswich 4's means that sides in Conference 'B' will only have 13 fixtures, whilst those in Conference 'A' will have 14, with Ipswich 3's having 15. Clearly this means that league positions cannot be decided simply on the number of points gained, so the decision has been made that the final placings should be on an 'average points per game' i.e. dividing the number of points accumulated by the number of games played.

GMS/Snowden results service cannot cope with this league so updates are pushed out by the league secretary via email to key contacts periodically. After yesterday’s fixtures, we believe the conference league looks like this:

YM have four to play, with big games against their closest geographical rivals; Ipswich 3s and Woodbridge 2s.

Consolidating 2nd place should be seen as a great achievement for this team.