Bromsgrove's Under-13s were celebrating on Sunday after clinching a retaining their title at the annual Sils Tournament.

Final preparation for the tournament was on Saturday morning with a group of eager coaches and players running through set moves. There was only one minor injury - to Malc when he was taken over in a tackle and taught a lesson of not holding onto the ball. As he was a coach non-one seemed too bothered!

Having won the tournament for the two previous seasons, the young Boars were not surprised that they were the only team asked to play back-to-back games.

As the first game against the tournament hosts commenced the rain started, making the ball greasy and difficult to control in-hand. Sils struck first, but the players dug in deep to earn a 10-5 win.

The next game was against Lichfield, where the Boars were able to demonstrate their superiority with a 15-5 win.

The crunch match was always going to be against Stratford and having lost to them in the finals of the last tournament, this was always going to be close. This would be the team’s third game in a row and they were playing a rested Stratford.

Stratford hit first with the their first cohesive attack, for the remaining minutes to halftime Stratford controlled the play. After halftime, with a few tactical changes and words from the coaches, the team came out and took the game to Stratford, quickly scoring a try. Despite continuous attacks from a resurgent Boars, Stratford managed to hold on for a 5-5 draw.

The team’s final opponents would be Birmingham & Solihull and expecting the final table to be tight, they knew a high score count could be needed to claim the tournament. The Boars were ruthless in brushing aside their opponents to claim an emphatic 45-5 victory.

Coupled with a surprise 30-10 win by Sils over Stratford, this meant that Bromsgrove won the tournament for their third successive year.

The tournament showed the depth and quality of players available to the coaches, but there can only be one player of the Tournament, which was Kiran Sharp who was chosen for his outstanding play at inside centre.

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Meanwhile, the squad offered further proof of its strength in-depth with the Development team putting up a terrific display against Mosely where they unluckily lost 15-7 despite dominating the game.

A much-earned mid-week rest for the lads is now on the cards and everyone can look forward to the season ahead with great optimism.

Well...

In a period of transition, the lads need to get used to playing 15-a-side, on a full-size pitch - with all the changes that entails. There are also a few additions to the squad and so the lads to get used to playing with some new faces too. On top of that there has been a slight change in the coaching set up, so perhaps it's no surprise that performances have been a little mixed.

With well over 30 lads, the coaches are doing their best to ensure equal game time and appropriate levels of competition for everyone so the games so far have taken a slightly different format to usual.

First match of the season was against Bromsgrove School - made more interesting as several of the young Boars were representing their school rather then their club! Indeed the school got off to good early pace and racked up three tries in the first of three 'halves'. Second half saw club pick up form and score two tries while in the third period further dominance by the home team meant that the final result ended up Bromsgrove RFC 24 Bromsgrove School 20.

The following week's home game against Droitwich ended with both Bromsgrove's 1st team and development losing. Droitwich proved themselves to be very well drilled on the day and ran out 26-7 (Try- Reece Warlow, Conversion- Danny Holmes) and 24-0 respectively.

Next up came a trip over to Stratford and a game also  played over three periods. The first 20mins saw Bromsgrove take the lead with a Reece Warlow try but Stratford bounced back with two tries of their own. Bromsgrove development team then took to the field and fought gamely but went down 26-0. Then Bromsgrove's 1st returned to action and this time took no prisoners with a resounding performance - Joe Wilson, Reece Warlow and Alfie Swift all scoring fine tries and Danny Holmes making two of three conversion attempts for a 17-0 win.

... and the lads looked very smart in the clubhouse after in their shirts and ties...

well done all