TagFest Coventry & Warwickshire has been a fixture in the calendar for five years now and this one was as competitive as ever! On Saturday 3rd August, just as players were arriving to Leamington RFC in Leamington Spa, the clouds parted and made way for a full fun day of sunshine and competitive Try Tag Rugby.

Most of the 12 teams were local to the venue, many hybrids of current teams playing in the current Try Tag Rugby Summer season. It was great to see teams made up from multiple players across different teams and venues in Coventry & Warwickshire. The breadth of inclusion, as ever, was represented with the age range from youngest player to the oldest, was some 50 years! The festival also welcomed Can’t be Thamed Valley, from the Thames Valley area plus several other travelling players who joined teams locally. Huge shout out to all the players who played with such great sportsmanship throughout the day – as commented by the referees!

Tag Rugby Phase 1
In the morning – phase 1, teams competed in two pools of six, being able to play every team in their pool once before moving into Cup, Plate and Bowl divisions based on the results for the afternoon. The referees were kept on their toes with some tight score lines and a few games finishing in a frustrating draw for players. At lunch time, whilst players sought shade in their pop-up gazebos and shared picnics plus hot food from the on site club house, points were added up and teams were ranked 1 to 12. Teams in positions 1 – 8 were to play for the Cup and Bowl in quarters, semi’s and finals, whilst teams ranked 9 – 12 played a round robin competition competing for the Plate.

Phase 2 and Finals
The afternoon was full of tension. All games were really competitive and well fought for with lots of noise from the sidelines and tactical subbing for sets. Games were 20 minutes in length so stamina and fitness was really at play in the afternoon hot sunshine! Despite not losing a game all morning, the hot favourites to win the tournament (Bombay Tagamix) were sadly beaten in the semi-finals by the eventual Cup winners Stu’s Beasts (so named after their chief supporter Stu who is present every week for their regular league games – on the sideline, cheering on the players!)

The final standings across all competitions were as follows:

Cup Winners – Stu’s Beasts
Runners up – Tagtical Chundur
3rd – Bombay Tagamix
4th – Shakiras

Bowl Winners – Another Manic Scrumday
Runners up – Can’t be Thamed Valley
7th – Trypods and Tagons
8th – Ruckaroos

Plate Winners – Legs, Bums, no Scrums
Runners up – Tag Me Beautiful
11th – Raggy Taggies
12th – Last Try Standing

Players of the Tournament
There were so many individual players nominated by the referees, far too many to name – which shows the quality of skill on show throughout the day. The male player of the tournament was the clear winner in his category with 4 player of the match nominations. Congratulations to Tom Baddeley from team Bombay Tagamix. The female player of the tournament was a tight one, eventually pipped by just one extra nomination to relatively new to Tag player, Olivia Glover (age just 16 years old) from team Another Manic Scrumday. Congratulations to all the nominated players and the two winners, Tom and Olivia.

Photos
Pictures from the tournament are on the Try Tag Rugby Coventry & Warwickshire Facebook page, so be sure to give these a like and a share. There are some cracking photos, almost every player on there caught in great action shots, so do take time to scroll through them. Pictures were kindly shared by photographers Tim Nunan and Nick Browning.

Referees
Without the amazing referees the tournament simply could not happen! With nearly all of the local Coventry & Warwickshire leagues referees wanting to play in the tournament, the remaining few having holiday commitments, we needed a whole team of travelling Try Tag Rugby referees. In step our wonderful community of national referees who travelled from far and wide to help TagFest Coventry & Warwickshire be so successful. Massive thanks to Sam Rounce, Matt Walker, Josh Dowse, Lizzie Ridd and Dwaine Robertson for their professional refereeing and fabulous sense of humour!

Thank Yous
In addition to thanking all the players and referees, we would also like to extend our thanks to our event staff and to Leamington RFC for hosting the event and the afterparty drinks in the sunshine. We hope everybody enjoyed the day and we already can’t wait for 2025!