Review: U16 and U18 academy festival at Stirling RFC

Two teams represented each region (Caledonia, Edinburgh, Glasgow & the West and Borders & East Lothian) at U16, and one team at U18 level.

The U16s played a match of 30-minute halves, while the U18 matches were 35 minutes each way.

Head of Pathways John Fletcher said: “It was fantastic to watch the players get stuck into our first regional academy festival of the season, and we thank Stirling County for hosting us.

“At this stage in particular, our focus is much more on the players bringing to life parts of the blueprint curriculum through the games than what the scores of the games were. We measure a range of things, including offloads, playing to the best space, manipulating the backfield in attack and different ways of getting the ball back, and setting traps and cutting down attacking options in defence.

“We saw some excellent commitment from all of the regional academy teams to put the curriculum into practice on both sides of the ball.

“We’ve got a lot coming up in the next few weeks with further two more regional festivals, and we’re looking forward to building on what was an excellent start to the season”.

The activity continues this weekend with another regional academy festival, again at Stirling County RFC, before a further festival on Saturday 3 August at Dalziel RFC.

To view the teams from Saturday, click HERE.