Sidmouth Under-11s The Sidmouth Junior section have been somewhat snookered recently with water logged pitches postponing fixtures or quagmire conditions rendering contests not much more than a mud wrestle, writes Craig Morgan.

The lads love it, but it doesn’t do much to develop the free flowing and open rugby that most coaches aspire to. So, it was a real pleasure to be entertained recently by Exeter Chiefs, on their all-weather rubber crumb pitch.

The crumb is hard and quite unforgiving in a fall, but does allow for expansive and ‘dry’ running rugby in the depths of a wet Winter which is a real treat.

The chiefs are a strong outfit having recruited well from their comparatively huge pool of fast strong juvenile specimens.

Howevere, once again the green army matched the old foe blow for blow. The Budleigh Bulldozer, Ben Hushon, bullocked his way to a huge total yards carried tally and Louis Stamp tore the Chiefs defence to shreds with a trademark break for our score.

However, at the whistle Exeter had managed two tries to our one.

In the second game Sidmouth always retained the upper hand largely through Max Dix ferretting his way to the heart of everything and winning us the ball.

Will Kennaugh scored with Josh Roberts chipping in too to make the score 2-1 to Sidmouth at the death. The ref did a great job contrary to the penalty count of 10 against Sidmouth and two against the Chiefs and two more disallowed Sidmouth tries.

Happy Christmas to all the Sidmouth Juniors.