28/09/2026
Match Report | Under 14 Boys v Folkestone
Finally underway! 🏉
After what felt like an endless pre-season - bone-hard brown pitches, more dust than grass, limited contact and no friendlies – the Warriors’ U14 season finally kicked off today.
And straight into it: league rugby away to local rivals Folkestone.
After two promotions last season, the boys are now in Division 4 and they’ve worked really hard through pre-season. Core skills, new strike moves, adapting to 15-a-side, lineouts… lots to work on, but more than anything they were desperate to get back to some proper rugby.
Selection was tough. So many boys put their hands up, and those who missed out pushed the 20 selected really hard. And today they were unleashed.
From the kick-off they ran hard and straight or on their J-lines! And when they didn’t have the ball, they hit and tackled even harder.
Two converted tries by half-time told only half the story. By the final whistle it was four converted tries to one and, in truth, it could probably have been more.
Austin finished all four tries, some effort, but they were all team tries, built on the work happening around him. That probably summed up the whole performance. No player of the match today either. It just didn’t feel right to single anyone out after such a strong team effort.
For a first game back, away from home, in a league fixture against a local rival, we really couldn’t have asked for much more. And Folkestone feels like a fitting place to start the U14 journey.
It was here in pre-season last year, as U13s, that we found ourselves at our lowest. We came away from that day knowing we needed to change how we wanted to play. From there came the game plans and elite behaviours that have helped take this group onwards and upwards. The players bought into it, and today felt like the start of the next chapter.
Next up is a friendly against Gravesend, where we’ll get the whole squad involved. Then, in two weeks’ time, we welcome Blackheath to Ashford, the oldest open rugby club in the world.
A pretty good reminder of how far these boys have come. Exciting to see where the U14 journey takes us.