Basildon 49, Thurrock 34

IN the winter sunshine, on Sunday, 21 November, at Basildon's Gardiner Close ground, Basildon and Thurrock RFC served up a very entertaining U16 game of rugby.

Initial exchanges were ferocious as both teams worked each other out and Thurrock led 7-5 after ten minutes. However, four Basildon tries and two conversions later, Basildon led 29-7 at the interval. Suddenly, all that early cohesion and aggression from Thurrock had gone missing in their game.

The third quarter carried on in a similar vein with Basildon running in three more tries to Thurrock's one Mitchell Lilley try in response.

However, these Thurrock U16s never give up and in the final quarter, Tees' 14 players realised that rugby is a team game and they worked very hard to get the ball to Tees' try talisman, Mitchell Lilley, who only needed a half chance to convert.

Tees dominated the exchanges in the final quarter and scored four tries (Lilley 2, Overy 1 and Martinaro 1) without response to make the final score a respectable 34–49.