Well, I said it's nice to win the odd match along the way. Especially if you win well. That means the whole squad working together to play our style, exactly as we saw at the East Sussex festival where all three teams pressured until they won the ball, then burst through and around the opponents. The players have been fantastic; at listening, at working hard, at talking to each other and at having fun. It's a joy to work with them.
The only team in Sussex to beat us in the last few weeks did just the same, and they used a very specific skill to steal our ball. We're going to teach ourselves to do the same.
It's called "jackling", and it's a fine art.
It works like this: after a tackle, you have about a second to get your hands on the ball and steal it. Then a ruck usually forms when you can't touch the ball, but can only win by pushing the other players off. But if you got your hands on it first, and you're on your feet, you can hold onto it and guide it back to your scrum half.
The "jackler" can be either the tackler or the first support player to arrive. You must be on your feet, and if the tackler is to get the ball they must let go of the tackled player first.
You need to be very stable, with your feet wide apart so you can get very low without falling over. And you need to be quick. If someone else arrives at the same time and starts driving you off, you're too late.
The U10 rules say that the player who picks the ball up from a ruck must pass it; they can't run with the ball. Although the jackled ball is slightly different, we should do the same. So the "scrum half" needs to have an attacking line to pass to. This means everybody being aware of which team has won the ball, and we'll call "blue ball" if it's ours, so we line for attack, or "red ball" if we've lost it and we need to line up for defence.
There we go. Simple. What could possibly go wrong?!
Tim