Twelve Year 4 pupils represented our school in the annual Sparkling Rugby event, held at Overton Rugby Football Club (ORFC) on Thursday 26^th April.

The St Mary’s tag rugby team, began their day by playing six local primary schools who were part of their group. Our first match started with a win against the Vikings with a score of 4-3. As you can imagine, this filled our newly put together team with enormous confidence. Spurred on by this success, they then proceeded to win three of their matches against Great Binfields Primary, St John’s Primary and St Martin’s junior school and draw one match against the skilful Winklebury junior school.

These results saw us safely through to the quarter finals where St Mary’s were up against Sherborne St John. Although now extremely excited, our team remained focussed and worked hard to win the match by 2-1 tries.

Now through to the semi-finals, we played the talented Great Binfields. By keeping our defensive line secure and making some excellent breaks we scored 3 -2 tries and won our place in the final!

The final game against Oakley saw our team giving it 100% defensively and 100% when attacking but unfortunately not winning the match. However, the St Mary’s team were thrilled with the result they achieved and are our first tag rugby team to get through to the finals!

Overall, we are extremely pleased with the fantastic result that our team, who have only been together for two weeks, achieved. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and performed brilliantly.

We would also like to thank Mr Hammond, who gave up some of his time, for coming into school and coaching our team. The children were able to become more skilled in their throwing and catching and also learnt more about the fun game of tag rugby! Mr Hammond also kept the team motivated on the day with encouraging team talks, fun warm-ups and side-line support. Thank you!

A thank you also to the parents that came along to show their support. I know that we enjoyed the day we hope you did too!

We’re already looking forward to what could happen next year!