The reason for that is that it was a fairly quiet week at the club. In addition to that fact, the author was temporarily blinded by witnessing the deplorable actions of a (s)team-mate in Northern Ireland on the Friday evening .

Regardless, this week has been far more successful and with that we’ll go on to talk about the week to come and the weekend that’s been!

On The Pitch
On Saturday we had the utmost pleasure to take part in a fixture against the united rugby side Edinburgh Clan. For the uninformed, they are a side that promotes full-contact rugby for those with disabilities, mixing able bodied players in to provide assistance. Their ranks included former Northern coach and player James Moncur as well Joe Colqhoun who now plays for Accies development side.

The match itself was a great contest, as Northern took Clan members Alex, Stephen, Darren and Marco into their ranks for the 2nd and 3rd thirds. All four played outstandingly well, and it was one of the authors career highlights to see young men who might not otherwise have the chance to play the game fully engaged and enjoying the sport that we at Northern perhaps take for granted.

Credit to all who took part in the 15-15 draw, but in particular to Dan "Sia" Jardine who conducted himself in a manner that was above and beyond the call of duty – you were truly a credit to yourself, your team-mates and the club in general on Saturday.

We look forward to the return fixture (optimistically in the early spring) and the author looks forward to getting a chance to see you have a run-out at Rugby Park next weekend!

Training/This Week
As you know, it’s back to action this weekend with a home fixture against league Broughton on Saturday. We lost narrowly both times to them this year and this will be a really tough challenge for us.

We need as many bodies as possible at training this week, to work on our tactics and strategy to beat them and we’d implore you to give up at least one if not both nights this week to give us that foot forward come kick-off on Saturday.

Tuesday will see us training at the Bunker, whilst Thursday will see us utilise the lights at Accies.

Weekend Activities
There was supposed to be a gathering for our resident extrovert Paul Hollands dreaded 30th birthday party but this has been cancelled.

With that, we move onwards into the week and to Saturday where a good performance should see us compete.

Yours in rugby,

ENRFC