On Friday the 18^th of October, a mixture of pupils from Year 8 and 9 travelled with Mr Price and Mr Dutton to Egremont in the west of the Lake District to play against the West Lakes Academy. The squad was co-captained by Tomos Newell and Richard McClean.

In this first game of the Tour, the game was very close in the first two thirds of the match with tries coming from Finley Saks Huish, Jared Chimpango, Michael Afolabi and Tyler Loughran. But in the final third, the home side began to break away, asserting their dominance. The final score was 44-22 to the opposition. Man of the Match was awarded by the opposition to Jared and Finley.

The second game of the Tour happened next door to the Youth Hostel where the team were staying in Keswick. A 12-a-side match in the park against each other on Saturday evening was a great way to improve the team's support and other attacking skills. Individual highlights from this game were Leo Poole scoring a hatrick, and Morgan Yeung finding space out wide to score on the wing on several occasions.

After the match, the boys, either individually or as a group, performed or led a short piece of entertainment for the rest of the team. The team’s winner went to Fraser and his friends, who performed a very funny rendition of Just What I Like by Bruno Mars. The Price’s favourite went to Tyler, Tomos and Michael’s arm-wrestling competition. Mr Dutton’s winner was Seb’s 2 truths and 1 Lie mystery.

Tomos and Richard confidently led the team into the final game of the tour on the way back to Manchester where, just off the M6 they played Kendal Rugby Club during the gusts from Storm Ashley. Kendal had a brilliant kicker who played inside centre who dominated their attacking play. We fell short in the end to the Cumbrians, who won 33-19. Our tries were scored by Sam Gwilliam and Finley Saks Huish, as well as a penalty try being awarded. Man of the Match for this game went to Richard for his relentless grunt, and hard work in the carry and being a constant nuisance when contesting rucks. The team played extremely well, certain players tackled showing great physicality, they contested and protected the ruck better than their opposition too, but they missed a couple of players in attack due to injury, which meant Kendal were better in that part of the game.

Overall, the tour was a total success with everlasting sporting memories made for the pupils. They challenged themselves to play against well-established rugby teams from more rugby-rich areas of the country. Once we returned to Stretford Grammar with tired bodies and smiling faces, the final award was presented to Tyler Loughran, which was for Tourist of the Tour, because of his companionship, leadership, respect and ‘rugbyism’.

A brilliant teammate to everyone!