For this week, nine intrepid Harrow players made the trip to Old Verulamians for a splendid joint training session. Old Vs provided us with outstanding hospitality throughout the session; they had gone to a great deal of trouble to set up the pitches with colour coordinated cones, pump up extra rugby balls to play with and even prepare pre-boxed and napkin wrapped hotdogs to finish. A big thanks therefore goes to all the Old Vs coaching staff, players and helpers for such a welcoming training session that enabled all the players to develop their skills and enjoy some great rugby. I am also delighted to say that Harrow behaved impeccably throughout the session and everyone should be very proud of how we represented our club – Well Done!

This was yet another great week for weather, and we have been very fortunate to have these late autumn weeks to develop key handling skills before things will inevitably turn wetter and colder later in the season. As the visiting team, we were led by Old Vs through their warm up and then got a brief glimpse of their standard training session before moving into matches. I was pleased to see that the animal warm up theme is not isolated to Harrow and we were all entertained and warmed up by Old Vs “walk in the jungle”. After demonstrating our best jungle animal impressions, we ran through a drill that simulated scoring a try and then collecting a loose ball. This was a new drill for the Harrow players but I was pleased to see how well they took to the task. The important skill of making downward pressure on the ball is often analysed frame by frame and can mean the difference in any tight game between victory and defeat. Therefore, whilst the importance of gaining this basic skill should not be underestimated, perhaps we will leave the swan dive lesson to later in the season! On the return leg of this exercise, the player had to gather the ball at pace from the ground and then pop a pass to the next player in the line. We will work more on gathering the ball from the floor over the coming weeks because it can be one of the only ways to effectively turn the ball over during tag rugby and so represents a vital opportunity to score against the run of play.

After this quick training exercise, we split the players into teams and then played a sequence of ten minute matches by rotating the teams around three pitches. Unlike last week opponents, this was not Old Vs first experience of the match format but this did not detract from how sharp the Harrow players performed in comparison. The Harrow players showed great teamwork, were keen to tackle, decisive in attack and calm under pressure to score some memorable tries. Old Vs showed pace, determination and great passing skills, which made for some exciting contests. All the players learnt a great deal and can be congratulated on how much effort they put in to these matches.

We finished the training this week with a Bulldog variation called “cats and rats” that gave all the players a chance to run off any last reserves of energy and work on their evasion technique. Next session is back home at Harrow and I look forward to seeing you all again.

Johnny