Year 8 Rugby Team winners

As reported in the Advertiser's Sport Section by Winston Brown.

'Grove School youngsters have achieved their own Grand Slam after success in a Shropshire schools rugby competition.  The Grove's Year 8 rugby team kept a 100 percent record in winning the Shropshire County Rugby Festival At Shrewsbury Rugby Club earlier this month.

The 13 strong team conceded only one try throughout the 16 team tournament, winning all four of their pool matches to qualify for the semi finals.  There they faced the Corbett School, Baschurch, in a tense match which went down to sudden death, golden try extra time before Sean O'Brien touched down for the winner.  In the final, Grove beat Church Stretton School 10-0 with tries from Connor McGuinness and Myron Clarkson. 

It is the first major success for the team which has lost only one match in the two years it has been together and has also qualified for next month's County Schools Cup finals. 

Grove PE teacher Mr Granger said: "It was a really big achievement for the boys to win the Rugby Festival and they were absolutely ecstatic.  They were really proud of themselves because none of the other sports teams in their year had won anything of any significance.  The semi-final against Corbett School was so tense and nail-biting all the way to the end. The boys were up against a fantastic team, so to score the golden try against them was a really, really big thing.  Often in finals, youngsters find it hard to get themselves 'up for it' but our defence wouldn't let anything past them and they probably wanted it a little bit more."

Congratulations and good luck in the County Schools Cup final.

The team members are:

Tomos Edwards, Luke Booker, Frankie Mansueto, Josh Bloor, Ryan Bolton, Sean O'Brien, Jarrod Clack, Ellis Moysey, Myron Clarkson, Ciaron Taylor Hodge, Lee Wedgwood, Thomas Gee, Toby Everton, Connor McGuinness, George Hargrave and Ryan Clark.