After a number of the under 11s joined the first team yesterday, and formed the Guard of Honour before a good win against Newbury, we were fortunate to have three senior players join and help us at training this morning. Jake and Brad coach in schools in the area, so it's great to have their expertise with us. We will bribe them to do it again soon!

The plan today was to continue building on the drills we have been doing over the last couple of weeks. The holding drill is designed to drive a strong defensive pattern, and ensure communication. We went back to basics on tackling, reminding the players of the technique to tackle properly, and do so safely. We finished up with a 2v1 drill to work on handling as well as making the tackle.

We then had the forwards work on scrum technique, whilst the backs worked on a game situation.

One the challenges is putting the drills together in game time, so we will have some unopposed drills next week to help run through the game patterns before our first festival.
We will also look to pull out some of the newer players to do some work in smaller groups.

We will send out a teamer for availability for the first festival. This may result in moving some of the squad between the teams to ensure we have an even balance on each team.

Please please please respond to this, if we don't know till late it will make planning difficult!

Final thing - subs are overdue, so make sure this is sorted this week. We cannot take anyone to festivals who haven't paid up.

Have a great week!
Steve