This week’s training was a joint effort between Harrow and the Old Grammarians. We agreed to work together to have a really productive session where the players and coaches could learn from each other and develop our skills.

Every joint training session is a great opportunity to gauge the season’s progress and identify where improvements can be made. However, most importantly, these sessions are about having fun with an element of friendly competition to help sharpen our skills and focus our play. These sessions are never about keeping score but it is inevitable that comparisons will be drawn. As such, it should be worth noting that this was the Old Grammarians first chance to play matches against another club. Notwithstanding their relative inexperience, the Old Grammarians should be congratulated on their performance, good humour and immaculate behaviour that set a strong benchmark for all away fixtures.

With another fortunate week for weather, we began the training session with our favourite dynamic warm up in the style of animals chosen by the players. After three goes at the snake, we imitated apes, big cats, kangaroos and then closed with a variety of birds of prey. This warm up got all the players, coaches and parents smiling and broke down any potential for an “us and them” atmosphere. As such, with the ice broken, we moved swiftly into an expanding game of Rob the Nest. This Under 7s stalwart has been absent from our training sessions up until this week but made a welcome return as we looked to work on “Continuity” as our Principle of Play this week.

The game began with a mad dash to collect as many balls as possible from the central nest and then evolved into players having to choose where to rob balls from opposing teams’ nests continually until one team had gathered enough eggs in their corner. Developing a passing element to the game, we upgraded the challenge through “two players one pass”, to “three players two passes” and finally to “all players all passing”. This offers a team the chance to show some lateral thinking and is great fun to watch the speed at which each team goes from running in a haphazard pack to forming a straight line back to their nest and passing down the line. There is no right answer to how best to win this game but success comes from the team that works together effectively and makes good decisions on which nest to rob from.

After this quick training game, we divided the players into three teams per club and cycled through matches of five minutes each way. From the outset, Harrow players took the initiative and our relative greater experience of match conditions was clear to see. The Harrow teams were scoring flurries of tries on all the pitches and then defending with continuity and intelligence. The Old Grammarians teams were playing their part with resilient tackling and I observed a number of Harrow tries that required every player to touch the ball at least once in fantastic displays of support running. As the Old Grammarians settled into the format, we saw some great solo effort tries from their players but our defensive pressure often resulted in turnover possession and more team tries for Harrow. Of particular note was the way that both teams recognised and showed their appreciation to each other when on the receiving end of a piece of skill or good play from the opposition team. In this, we can be delighted that all the players already demonstrated the great Rugby ethos of respect for our team mates and equal respect for our opposition.

Finishing the training session with a solid game of Bananas . . . wait for it . . . Bulldog I was delighted to award Ryan with the Player of the Week trophy for his excellent efforts throughout all of the activities. I look forward to seeing you all next week for our away fixture with the Old Verulamians at London Colney.

Johnny