Sunday the 25^th of March saw Hellingly HoundDogs host teams from Kent Phoenix and

East Kent Mavericks on the 3G surface at Eastbourne Sports Park.

The scrimmage was designed to give a number of rookie players from the Mavericks a little bit of experience before they enter the BAFA league for 2018, whilst also offering a lot of the new players from the other two team some match experience.

The HoundDogs’ first opponent were the Mavericks. The Mavericks ran away winners  20-0 and were very worthy of their win.  The HoundDogs got very little going on offence but demonstrated some good defence skills through the game.

The second game of the day for the HoundDogs was a much tighter affair. The

HoundDogs took on the Kent Phoenix, who were the HoundDogs’ opponent a few months back (when they ran away with, winning all three games on that date). The Phoenix took the lead but the young HoundDogs came back with a touchdown from Charlie Boorer, as he held onto a pass from his older brother Jacob, as three Phoenix players converged on him in the endzone. The Phoenix then took the lead again with a tight side line catch in the endzone. With time running out, the HoundDogs moved the ball quickly down the field and, with the last play of the game, saw Jacob Boorer connect with Roman Cameron-Dick to tie the game at 12-12.

It was then the return of the Mavericks for the HoundDogs team. This time the

HoundDogs put up a much better display and the game finished with a much tighter score line, as the Mavs ran out 6-0 winners. It could have been worse if it hadn’t been with the “never give up” attitude of Dylan Viles, who chased the rushing Mavericks’ player down to get an ankle tap on him just before the endzone.

Coach Luke Boorer commented “It was a fantastic display of teamwork from this side which lacked experience. On the day you could see the players really develop from the first game to the last. They have really started to show signs of a fantastic team spirit and have improved so much since the teams last run out in October last year. There are so many positives to look at, Riley Davis had several good runs for the offence before suffering an injury. Joules Parsons, Harrison Kane and Alex Edward also made several crunching challenges. It’s very hard to single players out as they all played well and represented the club to an extremely high standard”.

Euroshowers Man of the Match:

Offence – Captain Danny Townsend: lead the team extremely well and contained many of the opposition players in the line to give the QB plenty of time.

Defence – Dylan Viles: playing in his first game, Dylan made lots of fantastic challenges as well as being thrown into the deep end when Riley Davis suffered an injury.