Following their win at the ‘Family’ Tag-rugby final the week before, on Friday December 2^nd St John’s were entered into the West Essex Tag Rugby Tournament, which would take place at the Police Ground at Chigwell. There were 7 teams in our group from various schools around the Epping Forest area: Epping, Hereward, Alderton, St Johns C of E (that’s us) Chigwell as well as Moreton; each game would last eight minutes in total.

   The first game that St John’s played was against Chigwell and we started brilliantly – tagging ferociously ad pass the ball around well and the final result was 3-1 to us; our scorers were Ruby Curtis, Ethan Wellington and Jesse Friend.      

   The second game continued in the same style and was against Alderton, the result was 3-0 to us and the scorers were Jesse Friend with two and Frankie Organ with one. Next up was Moreton (from the Ongar area) and the result was 3-0 to us once again the scorers were Jesse Friend and Kian Steward with two. After that we played Hereward and the result was 4-1 to us; Jesse Friend scored two quite amazing tries, Shea Steward scored two. After that we played Epping Primary school. We won it and the score was 6-1 to us. Jesse Friend scored three, Frankie Organ scored two and Kasey Clark scored one. Our last match in the group stages was against Leverton from Waltham Abbey. We won it 3-0; the scorers were Shea Steward, Kian Steward and Frankie Organ.

     Throughout the tournament, St John’s tagging and all round defensive play was amazing. In each game we managed to get approximately 20-30 tags, which meant that we were able to break attacks down extremely quickly. In fact, Mr Jarmain told us tremendously happy about our tagging

After an extremely hard-fought tournament, the final had arrived and it would be St John’s CEP against Whitebridge from Buckhurst Hill (who had won the other group). It was a very, very intense game, but we managed to grab a win 4-2. The scorers were Shea Steward, Frankie Organ 2 and Jesse Friend. St John’s are now through to the Essex County finals in Southend-on-sea, which will take place at the end of March.