The Harbury festival proved to be a challenge for the U12's in the guise of some tough opposition in the form of Shipston, Kenilworth and our hosts Harbury.

The first of our 3 games was by far the toughest, our old nemesis Shipston, a team that we find very hard competition. The boys started a bit slow and allowed Shipston 2 scrappy tries in the first half, Leamington's defence was found wanting with too many tackles going high around the shoulders and too many players getting pulled into the breakdown which allowed Shipston some easy gain in ground once they recycled from the breakdown. At half time score was 10-0 to Shipston.

After some good positive words from the Captain Henry 'Bosher' Allerton and the somewhat ever greying coaches Andy and Lee the lads came out in the second half with a much better display of running rugby and got the first score of the half, Shipston seemed to be a bit worried that Spa had found some form and was keeping possession with excellent ruck and maul play. Shipston tried hard to batter the Spa defence but it withheld until the final minute, from a Shipston scrum they came on the blindside where 'Bosher' was the only man defending, unfortunately Bosher was pulled in too far to the scrum which gave Shipston an overlap, they were on for the corner, an heroic last ditch tackle by Thomas 'Minime' Griffiths was not enough to stop the try. The final score was 15-5 to Shipston. It turned out that Leamington were the hardest competition Shipston faced on the day as they absolutely hammered Harbury and Kenilworth with scores 40+

The second game was against our hosts Harbury, the lads put in a much better performance the whole game, some poor handling and wrong decision making lead to a marginal win over our hosts, we should have won the game by a lot more than one solitary try but the effort by all was there with Drew 'Spear Thrower' Sinnott making some lighting runs and Bosher with Robbie 'Basher' Foster making some hard yards, the ever present Charlie 'Long Legs' Wiggin and Xavier 'Silent Assassin' Adkins helped keep the team going forward and stealing some vital ball by excellent counter rucking.

The third and final game against Kenilworth our old rivals across the bypass. The coaches were hopeful that with the arrival of Robert 'Surgeon' Sharp for the final game Kenilworth would be sliced open and the tries would come as fast as the Spear Thrower could run, this was not to be the case, after a prolonged break between games it seemed the boys had eaten too much burger and ice cream and were very lethargic. Kenilworth went into the break with a 10-5 lead. The start of the second half did not improve until Olly 'Tackler' Milner was subbed after some very fine defensive tackles to save the blushes of his team mates. The man to replace the Tackler was none other than Freddie 'Quickfoot' Quelch, his arrival seemed to galvanise the team. A sublime pass from George 'Surehands' Timms to Quickfoot lead to a spectacular try under the posts to bring the score level. The pressure was on, the coaches , Mums and Dads were all biting finger nails to see if Leamington could secure their second win of the day, even the bears in the woods stopped what they normally do in the woods the atmosphere was that tense. Leamington secured possession with some fine rucking close to the Kenilworth goal line, a deft pass from Harry 'Pocket Battleship' Lummis lead to the winning try being scored. The writer of this report cannot remember who scored the winning try as he was jumping around like a looney at Spa's emphatic win.

Overall a good performance from all the team with 2 close wins and one very close loss to a strong Shipston team. Leamington were runners up on the day, not a bad start to the season don't you think?