Last year’s team
from Bronte House U11 team finished the season with a very hard fought
draw against a very good RGS Newcastle team giving probably their most
determined performance of the whole season. This was a great way for the
team to finish its Rugby education at Bronte. The team moves up to The
grove without its outstanding captain David Gascoigne who has moved to
the USA but with a nucleus of talented players in Ben Waddington,
William Wood and Sam Bean to name but three. They have been joined by a
number of talented players new to The Grove and should develop into a
fine U12 team.
This is a good
indication of part of the role of rugby at Bronte, to provide a group of
players for The Grove with a sound grasp of the basics of rugby, with
experience of high quality competition and with an acute sense of the
values associated with Rugby. Of course along the way it is nice to
report on success for the teams at Bronte and although the hard work of
the boys and coaches can improve the performances of the players the
ultimate success of the teams is largely down to the intake. Boys
numbers are such that for us to put out B teams we use every boy in the
school to represent Bronte at some point and many of these boys develop
a real enthusiasm for the game and continue to play outside school with
local clubs and help to continue the excellent reputation of the school
for rugby. This will always allow us to send up talented players to The
Grove and next year will see the likes of Ryan Gibson, Paddy Zeigler and
Joe Green and others provide a backbone to the team. But for Bronte
teams to be successful against the large HMC Junior Schools such as QEGS,
St Olave’s and RGS Newcastle we need an a large group of talented boys
in a year group. We hope that this year 5 group of boys could be our
next large talented group, with at least 10 of the 20 boys in the year
showing great promise at the game. The team recently gave a great
performance at half time at Leeds Carnegie v Sale Sharks at Headingley
which was far more interesting than the main game!
Our Year 4 rugby
players have lost heavily a few times so far and we shall be continuing
our policy of fast tracking gifted boys in year 3 into the U9 team. This
has the dual benefits of strengthening the U9 team and moving some of
the year 3 boys in their rugby education as soon as they are able. We
hope that this policy and the new introduction of Games lessons as well
as PE and swimming lessons will help to develop Bronte players quickly.
