JUNIOR WARRIORS | MY FAVOURITE GAME

Ever fancied writing a match report on your favourite Warriors game?

With schools now closed for the foreseeable future, Warriors will be giving children regular fun tasks to help them work on their skills and keep the mind occupied over the coming weeks.

This week we will be focusing on literacy skills as we ask children to write a mini match report on their favourite Warriors game.

The Sixways roar, the crowd chants and the edge of the seat action are all key ingredients of the matchday experience, not to mention the Kids Zone pre-match or half-time challenge! We want children to relive that experience through the power of writing and send their reports to us either by social media or emailing them to maximus@warriors.co.uk.

Warriors staff members have also been asked for some of their favourite games too, and we will be adding one a day to the article this week. You can read Warriors Community Foundation Education Manager Dave Rogers’ report on the right.

While these tasks are aimed at schoolchildren, it doesn’t mean that adults can’t get involved too and it would be great to read as many as we can!

Click here to read full instructions to participate in ‘My Favourite Game’.

MY FAVOURITE GAME

Worcester Warriors 30-30 Bristol Rugby | 2015

By Dave Rogers

I’ve been working at Warriors since 2008 and the answer to this question is pretty easy. Warriors 30-30 Bristol on May 27 2015. For a whole season to come down to the very last kick was incredible and in more than 30 years of playing and watching sport, no other game has destroyed my emotions like that one.

Warriors were looking fairly comfortable in the first leg, Chris Pennell scored in the South West corner, right by where I was standing and we were 16-6 ahead. Like most people in the stadium, I was reasonably relaxed with no idea of what was about to happen. The game changed when Cooper Vuna was sent to the sin bin and Bristol scored three tries in 10 crazy minutes.

Just as I had resigned myself to defeat we got a penalty try, Bristol were a man down, and I had to run to the main office as it was my job to get the B&I Cup down to the pitch if we won! I missed Bristol going down to 13 men but watched Chris Pennell’s second try and Ryan Lamb’s conversion from the office all on my own.

I had the perfect view and soon as the ball left his foot I could see it was good and I had to run past thousands of ecstatic people and get the trophy on to the pitch for the players lap of honour.

Hope, despair relief, a huge load of empathy for the people who worked for Bristol and then unconfined joy – that game had absolutely everything, but I wouldn’t mind it if I never have to go through anything like that again!

Worcester Warriors 21-19 Bath Rugby | 2019

By Simon Northcott

Warriors against Bath Rugby at Sixways during the 2018/19 season had absolutely everything. It was exciting, fast, furious and full of suspense with lots of drama.

In the last minute of the contest Warriors were camped on Bath’s try line, looking for a dramatic winning try. The clock was now at zero and then this happened…

Penalty to Warriors directly in front of the posts. Three points was not going to be enough to seal the points, so our captain elected for a scrum.

What followed was amazing. Penalty to Warriors at the scrum followed by a series of reset scrums, followed by Bath players being red carded, yellow carded and our visitors losing the plot.

The final scrum of the match came 18 minutes after what should have been the final whistle and with Bath down to 11 men, Bryce Heem scored with Duncan Weir scoring the extra points for the win.

Warriors 20-6 London Irish | 2019

By Stewart McCullough

My favourite game has to be our Gallagher Premiership festive fixture against London Irish at Sixways this season.

Having previously worked at Irish, I was really looking forward to catching up with old faces as well as sitting next to my mate in the Press Box, who had travelled down from Leeds to cover the game for the Telegraph and The Rugby Paper.

By this point I had only been in my new role at Sixways for just under a month, but the club had certainly grown on me from the outset thanks to its superb culture.

With a sell-out expected for this game, the first at Sixways since April 2018, there was a real sense of anticipation as staff from the club laid out Warriors flags on every seat in the stadium.

Despite the game struggling to wow the crowd, it was certainly a tense contest for the 10,000 plus spectators to witness and was not until Jono Lance’s try on the hour mark, that the Warriors faithful could start to relax a little.

Back to kick-off now, and I have to say that I was immensely proud of the club as our players ran out onto the pitch in front of a capacity crowd. Sixways was in full voice in the opening exchanges as Warriors flyer Tom Howe crossed in the corner only for referee Ian Tempest ruling the try out for a knock-on as he stretched over.

Warriors’ early pressure came to nothing at it was Irish who registered the first points of the afternoon very much against the run of play courtesy of the boot of experienced fly-half Stephen Myler.

However, the visitors’ lead lasted only three minutes as Duncan Weir scythed in for a well-worked try after Irish full-back Alivereti Veitokani gifted possession to Warriors with a wayward chip over the top.

Weir added further points to the scoresheet with two penalties in quick succession, before the Exiles were reduced to 13-men when Alan Dell was yellow-carded followed by Motu Matu’s sending off for a high tackle on Warriors’ Scotland number-ten.

Irish closed the gap with a penalty two minutes into the second period, however, the remainder of the contest belonged to Warriors whose persistence in attack was rewarded with a killer Lance score just short of the hour mark.

Warriors Women 15-12 Bristol Bears Women | 2019

By Elizabeth Shermer – Warriors Women

It was our first game back after the autumn international break and we were raring to go as we welcomed Bristol Bears to Sixways in December 2019.

A lot had changed within the Warriors Women set-up, with the introduction of a new coaching team spearheaded by Director of Rugby Jo Yapp, a series of new players and an injection of energy throughout the squad.

Bristol had beaten us in every encounter during the Tyrrells Premiership, so we were itching to get a win, and we did! The fact that this was our first win of the season is not the reason for this being my favourite game – the match was also billed as Sepsis Awareness Day and it was the opportunity for many of the girls to play in front of a big crowd at Sixways.

1,700 tickets had been sold for the game and it was the first time that I fully felt part of the club and I realised how proud they were to have a Women’s team. The energy and belief that the crowd gave us that day was fantastic and it meant that we were able to come out of the blocks firing, with the team taking a big lead going into half-time.

Bristol came back hard and the scoreline shrunk to only a couple of points separating us. Fortunately, we were able to dig in and see out the game with a win and the feeling once the final whistle went was incredible.

The crowd were singing Sweet Caroline and we could not wipe the smiles off our faces. We had finally started to show what we were capable of and that we were a team that both Worcester Warriors and the city of Worcester could be proud of.

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