Sunday 13th saw a Vandals U9 squad hit Stoke Park for the big Guildfordians Festival. The squad was: Leo, Adam, Toby, Louie K, Louis R, Issac, Troy, Jett, Eddie and Charlie.

Once we found our pitch in the muddy mountain range that is Stoke Park, the sun came out to give us perfect conditions for rugby!

The format was a round robin, with 4 fixtures selected from amongst the 18 participating teams from around Surrey, Kent and Berkshire.

First up was Wimbledon Warriors and we were quickly into our stride with some good solid tackling showing through. We drew the game and was a pleasing start. Our second game was against Sutton & Epsom and this time, as well as continuing our strong tackling and defence work, we also got the ball out of contact and spread it out scoring some excellent tries. We were 3 unreplied tries up when a long break for an injury to and S&E player saw the game ended. Fortunately, the player was ok and the game was played in good spirit.

Next up was Chobham, another team we had not played before. This was the best game of the 3 to that point. We continued to tackle well, in fact so well, that we pushed Chobham backwards with several 7-tackle turnovers. Some excellent tries from our pace men saw us comfortably win the game.

Our final pool game was against Dorking, a strong side. Nonetheless, in what was the game of the day, we dealt well with their strong and elegant attack play, with some powerful defending and again, good tries from both our pace men and across the team.

All of this meant that we had fininshed unbeaten and 3rd overall out of 18 teams, with only Windsor and Sevenoaks ahead of us by virtue of winning all of their 4 games. This all meant that we then had to defend the honour of our derserved 3rd place, by facing the hosts, who had fininshed 4th.

Any fears were soon removed, with yet another brilliant performance, built on solid, unyielding defensive play and the 3rd place overall trophy was ours!

A really great day had by all and the consistency of defending and tackling was really pleasing to see. We never looked vulnerable and all those Sundays of tackle practise are clearly starting to pay off! Congratulations to Guildfordians for a very well organised festival.