Eastern Counties Rugby Union

Eastern Counties, in conjunction with Southwold RFC, hosted its inaugural U21 / University Returners Festival on Easter Sunday.

The aim of the event was for clubs to re-connect with their former youth players now at university, and play in a friendly and fun festival.

Southwold laid on a beer festival to support the event, and around 80 players from Colchester, Hadleigh, Diss and Southwold took part.

Each team played each other initially, but the sides were so well matched, and after 2 “rounds”, all 4 teams had both won and lost one game each, with only one score separating each team
Colchester beat Hadleigh in the 3rd / 4th place play off, with Southwold reversing their earlier result against Diss, to claim The Southwold Trophy.

The rugby was played in the very best spirit and values.

Results :-

Ross Cowie, Chairman of Eastern Counties CCPD, presented the trophy to Southwold skipper, Tom Debenham, thanked all players and their clubs for supporting the new event, and for a great day’s rugby; all aims had been more than achieved, and the plan would now be for this to become an annual event, and he hoped that further clubs would support in the future.