Voyagers 7’s come close but no cigar!

Tuesday, 19th June 2018

The Voyagers 7’s team has recently taken part in two high-profile tournaments. As defending champions, we attended the 69th Old Penarthians RFC 7’s tournament in May, qualifying from our group but losing out in the semi-finals to a rejuvenated Penarth RFC team. In a tense match, our young side found themselves 21 nil down at half time but played some great rugby to claw their way back to 21-21 with a minute to play. Beaten by the bounce of the ball in the dying seconds, Penarth RFC ran out eventual winners 28 - 21.

A fortnight later we played in the Elite Men’s competition at Bournemouth 7’s. This event attracts the very best 7’s sides from the UK and overseas and the standard was superb this year. Due to a number of injuries to our normal squad, we were delighted to have a number of Fijian players wearing the Voyagers colours. These players usually represent the Army but were given special dispensation to join our ranks. Having qualified from our group on the Saturday after a fantastic win over Ponty Butchers (who we’d lost to in the pool stages at Penarth a fortnight before), we lost a tense quarter final on Sunday by a couple of points.

The Voyagers have now got an excellent squad of talented young players capable of mixing it with the very best teams. Credit again to Nigel Connell for assembling such a competitive squad in the face of adversity. Thanks also to Gar Thom, the Gazebo Gopher, for keeping the lads fed and watered!