Gemmell pushes for England place (From Craven Herald)

Gemmell pushes for England place

10:30am Thursday 7th January 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

WITH an 18-game unbeaten record stretching back to 2007, the England Under-18 team have set the bar at a very high level for the next batch of players seeking to win a coveted jersey at this level.

That process continued with the England Under-18 Divisional Festival, which managed to beat the freeze, courtesy of the all-weather surface at West Park Leeds RFC, with all four games going ahead as scheduled on Saturday and Monday.

The climax of the tourna-ment was Monday’s game between Saturday’s winners London and South East and the South West and, thanks to a last-gasp score by London, both teams preser-ved their unbeaten tag after a 22-22 draw.

“It was a good final and it’s been a good festival,” said England Under-18 coach John Fletcher.

“Lots of players who have come through the county route have had an oppor-tunity to represent their division and it was a fitting end. It was a close game and a draw was probably a fair result.”

In Saturday’s games, the South West beat the Mid-lands 29-15 and London & SE beat the North 40-15.

In the other game played on Monday, the Midlands beat the North 27-6.

Included in the North squad was former North Ribblesdale RUFC and Gigg-leswick School player Chris Gemmell, now at the Leeds Carnegie Academy attached to Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley.

The North 18 Group prep-arations were hit by bad weather when the squad met at Woodhouse Grove School, but the coaching and management team were very pleased with the atti-tude of the squad given the rather bleak conditions en-countered over the weekend.

Another positive element from that training session was the announcement of Lancashire’s Ally Suther-land as captain.

The North had two players who played last year in current Otley player Chris-tian Georgiou, who also plays for Yorkshire, and Leeds Carnegie, and Will Addison (Cumbria and Sale).

Helping to give the side a potent back division is Mark Jennings (Cheshire and Sale Sharks), who was called into the England Squad that recently played and defeated the Australian Schools.

The pack was well balan-ced and contained one young man who was bound to be the focus of special attention.

Josh Beaumont, of Arnold School and Fylde, is the son of former England and Brit-ish Lions skipper Bill, who led his country to the Grand Slam in 1980 and captained the Lions later that year.