Cougars v Adrossan

Our mighty P4’s travelled up the coast to Ardrossan on a bitterly cold but dry Sunday morning. With our typically “lean” numbers at the best of times, this fixture put a real squeeze on as we almost managed a full travelling team quota with Ben, Dylan, Jack and Lachlan from our regular P4 squad. Aiden reacquainted himself with his old playing buddies and very kindly stepped out from his P5 duties to become a full time member of our squad for the day. Our hosts also kindly loaned us a few players every 5 mins or so to allow us to play a 6 a side game so many thanks Accies and high five Aiden, greatly appreciated ?
We played just two games today, first up was an Ardrossan P4 team followed by another Ardrossan P4/5 team whereby we combined with our P5 club mates for this second fixture.
Our first match was a very one sided affair, Cumnock Cougars running in almost a try a minute over two 10 minute halves resulting in a 19-0 score line with ‘Basher’ Ben McKinlay and Lachlan ‘The Trawler’ Gilliland both running in 9 tries each accompanied with Jack “Lion Heart” Droy scoring his first ever competitive try at this age grade with a fantastic “pick and go”.
Whilst our ‘try fest’ from the previous weeks proves our strength in attack, we focused midweek on our defence, our line discipline, owning our “corridors” and using a “rush defence” to intimidate any potential attacks and pressure our opponents. It was clearly evident today that our midweek training was put into good practice with everyone putting ‘bodies on the line’ to keep a completely clean sheet today. The commitment from the boys was phenomenal, even with such a healthy winning advantage, the determination and spirit to defend was just totally admirable, Jack “Lion Heart” especially put the pressure on “up front” along with Aiden with anyone that got through being “swept up” by Basher or The Trawler. A major shout out to Dylan as well today, battling with breaking in new boots, he dug deep to overcome some sore feet to showcase his jinky moves and keep Accies guessing just which way he was going.
Our second game as a combined P4/5 was somewhat similar albeit we had healthy playing numbers so recycled the squad often but it was great for our P4’s to test themselves against the “bigger ones”. They simply did not look out of place in any way, providing the sort of intensity and work rate that have become our P4 trademark of late, perhaps due to the fact of our lower playing numbers and the fact we rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to play with substitutes these days.
A fantastic performance today, showing just how far this small group of players have come in the first half of their “full contact” season. The introduction of the tackle and ruck to their game, the sheer physicality of the game and then add in a bitterly cold winter morning, these boys are made of hard stuff - they are really starting to gel as a team, if you look at the photos, the supporting runners and bridging players at the breakdown, our clean sheet just proves how “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” - well done buys #P4PRIDE ⚫️?⚫️?