Coach pleased as referee calls time

ALCESTER’S head coach Dave Miles admitted he was pleased Saturday’s Counties One Midlands West (South) game with Worcester was able to go ahead at Kings Coughton, even though it was brought to an end by the referee with nearly 20 minutes to play.

And he was pleased with the impact of some of the young players selected with the first team suffering with a string of injuries.

“It was good to get the game on,” Miles said after Alcester ran out 43-5 winners. “Both teams wanted to play and were up for it - the weather can be unpredictable so the last thing we want is fixture congestion so this means we keep our rest weeks.

“They [Worcester] had picked up a couple of injuries and the conditions were getting worse. They asked the ref if he could call it off. He checked that it had gone past the point where he could call it off and the result stands.

“We had a few players out of position and had young Noah Birks making his debut for the firsts. His brother was playing for the seconds and his dad, Phil, is still around the 1sts. It was his first adult game just a few weeks ago and he has been training with the firsts every Tuesday and Thursday so he knows how we want to play and he worked his way into the game.

“We wanted to make sure we had some good early touches with it being such a young team.

“We have a youthful seconds team so whenever we get the opportunity, we try and bring players through so that they can get some game time. We have had a few injuries in the backline so this was an opportunity to give some of them a run-out and they did well.”

Alcester had the Kings Coughton slope and gale force wind in their favour in the first half and Miles was keen to get points on the board.

He added: “Normally when you are playing down the hill it is worth 15 to 20 points in the dry but with the wind we were shouting to try and get some more scores - we thought that the back end of the 30s would be enough and it proved to be.

“We showed that we can play a number of ways in the wet, through the middle or out wide.”

See this week’s Herald for a full match report and pictures.