What a difference a week makes

Following last week’s good battling performance against Tynedale, we should have travelled to Blaydon full of confidence. However, we lost this game before the lads had even set foot on the pitch. We were missing 5 players who would normally start games and this affected the lads who travelled to Blaydon and they didn't believe in themselves. We had to reshuffle the line-up due to the missing players and also gave a debut to Josh Jelly, lining up; 1. Conall Ruddick 2.Joe Hull (c) 3.Scott Redshaw 4.Daniel Vine 5. Alexander Jackson 6.Sam Veever 7.Keiran Dover 8.Matthew Gunnion 9.Nathan Williamson 10.Daniel Smith 11.Michael Justice 12.Josh Jelly 13.Luke Clarke 14.Tommy Tennant 15.Dillan Telford with the replacement being Alex Goldsmith.

This was a relatively inexperienced squad with only 3 players having played rugby prior to this season but all of the lads in the squad today have all shown enough ability in training and games to have been capable of giving Blaydon a good game. However, from the first try Blaydon scored, we didn't have enough belief in ourselves and we made it too easy for Blaydon to go on and win the game comfortably. This team has a fantastic spirit and they never give up trying no matter what the score but that attitude was missing today.

There were still positives to take from the game. Line outs worked well and the lads who played out of position all did themselves justice and this will give us options for the remainder of the season. This has been a good season for this team, this was just one of them games when we have to accept that we didn't perform to how we know we can, learn from it and move on. You all know you are better than this performance showed so let’s keep up the hard work in training and show the real Consett in the remaining games of the season.