Ormskirk u.12’s ventured over to The Littleborough Tournament for their first competitive outing of the season. The mood was optimistic after a good pre-season and a strong squad to pick from. Fortunately the weather was fine and after a few wrong turnings the boys arrived keen and eager for action.
In the first game Ormskirk came up against a very strong Huddersfield team who had the advantage, on a small pitch, of having a very big pack.In a tight first half Ormskirk were no respecters of size and matched their opponents with some tenacious tackling.After the break Ormskirk fell behind to an excellent individual try from the Huddersfield fly half. The game was finally settled late on by a barracking run from the Huddersfield prop forward who crashed over from a couple of metres out. Spirits were high for the second game against Widnes and in another close encounter Ormskirk lost out to a single try scored midway through the second half. After the games there was a feeling from all the coaches that this was a much improved  performance from the under 12s- yes there is still much to work on but there was a commitment from the lads, particularly in the area of tackling, that was lacking last season.All in all this was a good team performance but perhaps deserving of a special mention are Craig Ennis who worked tirelessly all afternoon and Kyle McNally who put in some excellent tackles. The only thing which put a bit of a dampener on a good day was the non arrival of the Aspatria team which meant that of all the 7 clubs participating on the day Ormskirk were the only team to play just 2 games. Obviously with substitutions this meant that some players did not get as much game time as the coaches would have liked and this is perhaps something that organising commitees may need to look at in future tournaments, especially for teams travelling a reasonable distance.
