Sidmouth Under-7s took to the pitch for their first action of 2016 with matches against Bridport.

With the weather being so wet of late, the pitch resembled a tropical mud bath and so the chosen object of the day was mud pies - this much to the delight of the parents whom had to transport home their muddy youngsters and then take on the task of washing the mud laden kit – and boots!

Sidmouth are so well supported in numbers in the age group – there are in excess of 35 youngsters in the Under-7 section, and so willing volunteer George Williams was ‘loaned’ to Bridport to enable them to field two teams to play in a round-robin with the six teams from Sidmouth.

With conditions under foot going from bad to worse the games played were an entertaining affair for all concerned, particularly with the willingness of the players to mud slide, dive and generally get as muddy as they could!

Team Green One was overseen by head coach Mark Ross and Jude Barrett took on the family style of play from his Dad (Matt Barrett, a former Sidmouth Chiefs player) with a route-one style through the middle of the pitch. A number of his forays into Bridport territory resulted in excellent offloads to a willing supporter in Zac Dunstan. Others to adopt this route to the line were Arden Chipping, James Young and Alistair Gibson who were equally good at their offloads to the supporting Elsie Wiltshire and Elliot Allen.

The Player of the Day award went to Adam Turley who showed great determination, improvement in all areas of his game with a true rugby team spirit topped off by a number of well constructed darting runs and resulting tries. Much to his mum and dad’s enjoyment of Adam winning the trophy they also were awarded a bag of very dirty and muddy team shirts to wash this week!

Overall a draw between both sides was the final outcome of this fun fixture that was finished off with a large game of tag bulldog for the 45 players involved.