We had thirty two OE boys at Blackheath just two short of a full compliment. We were treated to a very enjoyable mornings rugby on Blackheath's new 4G artificial pitch which was a real pleasure to play on. OE's have discussed raising funds to lay this type of pitch on the paddock area (i.e. were the mud is near the floodlights) at Foxbury and having now seen how these pitches play this would be a great development for the club if we could move this project forward.

Blackheath were excellent hosts, and its always nice to receive compliments about our boys abilities and the structure of their play. I thought both the A & B squads were excellent throughout the training and matches, with some really high quality rugby on display from all involved. What's particularly pleasing is that the boys are now beginning to understand their positions and what their roles are within the team, which means a lot less coaching from the sidelines with the boys making the decisions themselves which is clearly the way forward.

After some joint training we split the boys into their two squads to play some matches - 2 halves of 10 mins followed by 2 halves of 5 mins each way.

We moved Dillon up into the A team squad and he made a great impact playing wing and centre during the morning and finishing off one excellent try by the backs. After a difficult start when Blackheath pushed us really hard and played some excellent rugby against us, we slowly began to get into the game. As our rucking started to come together and we began to get parity in the scrums, we were able to start moving and offloading the ball. Despite the windy conditions we tried to move the ball around and when we got it into the wider channels our wings looked really dangerous. Special mention to Oscar B who was excellent all morning and also Josh who scored a couple of tries. We rotated our six forwards and all the backs throughout the matches so it was a real squad effort. The final score was 6-0 to OE's, with our defence outstanding yet again, but it was a really good work out in testing conditions so thanks again to Blackheath.

We had 18 boys for the B squad so Nik and Kevin rotated them through two teams. The commitment and aggression were high in both games with real benefits seen once the boys started moving the ball wider and out to our quick runners on the wings. Hamish playing at outside centre scored an excellent try with George and Lucias also chipping in with tries. David refereed this games and both he and Nik noted that we are still getting penalised for handling in the ruck and coming in from the side, which are areas the boys need to think about and get right. Overall though another excellent performance from the B squad who won 5-0 on aggregate.

Reflecting on the last four weeks we've played some of the strongest teams in the county including Beckenham, Dartfordians, Beccahamians, Sevenoaks, Edenbridge and Blackheath. The A squad have won all 6 games scoring 25 tries and conceding 1, whilst the B squad have played a combined 9 games, of which they have won 6, drawn 1 and lost 2 (both losses coming narrowly against Beckenham and Dartfordian's A teams). Overall the B's have scored 24 tries and conceded 8. I think its fair to say we've had a successful start to 2011!!!! Well done to all the boys.