Oaklands Rugby Team Finish off the Season in Style

BIRMINGHAM — Oaklands College Rugby team wrapped up the season winning the British Colleges Sport (BCS) Tournament in Birmingham on Wednesday 9 May.

The day started brightly with wins against Peterborough (47-10) and Worcester (35-0). However, it was in the third game, against Gower College in Swansea, that the heavens opened, impacting on the level of rugby played.

The semi-final was against Moulton College, linked with Northampton Saints, which saw Oaklands come out on top allowing them to progress through to the facing Surrey champions, Filton College.

The final started well with Oaklands putting their opponents under huge pressure – mistakes by the Bristol team and some quick hands from the Oaklands players led to two early scores – making the half time score 10-0 to Oaklands.

Filton then fought back with a good score under the posts, which was converted to make it 10-7. A second score from the South West team took the scores to 12-10 to Filton, setting up a tense final two minutes. Oaklands won a penalty and after keeping the ball they won a scrum 5 meters out from the Filton line with less than one minute left on the clock. From the scrum Nick Tompkins managed to squeeze, and then twist his way over the line for the winning score. Captain Alex Smith then converted to make the final score 17-12 to Oaklands.

Collectively the team worked exceptionally hard throughout the day and thoroughly deserved their victory. There were some standout performances from Jonny Sykes, Hayden Stringer, Tompkins and newly back from injury, James Ayrton, and Brandon Lewsey.

The college would like to congratulate all members of the The Squad: Stringer, Elliott, Smith, Falvey, Tilley, Tompkins, Trotter, Ayrton, Sharp, Sykes, Hague-Blundy and Lewsey

In addition to the boys team, the college also fielded a girls team in the same tournament, drawing in their final 10-10 in an end-to-end game against Birmingham Met Uni.

If you would like to be a part of a winning team, please contact rugby@oaklands.ac.uk – the course is hugely over subscribed for 2012-13, but there are still a couple of places for a couple of front five players.

For more details about the newly introduced Girls Rugby at Oaklands please contact ryan.freckleton@oaklands.ac.uk.