After the excitement of the Middlesex festival, we were home training this week.

With a shortage of players we were limited in the work we could do, but that didn't stop everybody getting stuck in.

We started with a simple passing drill, focussing on positioning and moving up in channels. The objective was to maintain field position and keep our shape, to enable better passing and exploit space on the wings.

It took a few attempts to get it right but by the end of the drill we saw much better positioning from all players.

We introduced tackle pads held by 3 players to encourage offloads. This is still an area of the game we are weak in. At the festival we lost out getting tied up in the middle of the park. It is an area we need to continue to work on.

After this we got into some games, split with a tackle competition on the pads. Due to numbers we were down to teams of 4 and 5. The team of 5 had to maintain a dedicated scrum half while the other team could use the closest player.

Jack was nominated first. As Jack is a born tackler, he struggled to adjust to this fixed role, hence why this choice was made to help him develop his all round game.

The first game was a tight affair, with good tackles being made, but again we saw many ripped balls because it wasn't being protected well enough in the initial tackle or maul.

In the second game the teams were swapped so team 1 had 5 players. Adam made the swap across. (Team 1 - Louis, Owen, Adam, Romario, Rayyan. Team 2 - Jack, Georgia, Luke, Ben). This was a flowing game with great efforts made on both sides.

Louis was elected as Scrum Half and performed very well throughout the game. We saw much better support play but again got wrapped up in the tackle and maul and consistently saw the ball ripped out, nearly every time by Jack.

We saw some great tries from Luke, Georgia, Jack, Romario, Owen and Rayyan. More would have been scored but for a few instances of show-boating. Remember get the ball down, then get excited and celebrate!

The second game ended abruptly due to an injury and the score was 5-3 to Team 2. A certain try would have been scored by Team 1that would have brought the scores closer together.

And so on to the Player of the Week. This could have gone to a few players, Louis at scrum half, Georgia for some great runs and tackles, Rayyan and Romario for their excellent support play for each other. They worked so well together to offload the ball between each other in a maul situation. But the stand out player today was Jack 'The Ripper' Coyne. Throughout the session Jack listened to advice, adjusted his tackling technique for the 2nd game but most of all making himself the biggest nuisance when tackling and in the maul to rip the ball in 9 out of 10 occasions. Well done Jack

There is no rugby next week due to Easter so have a fantastic break and look out for emails for the next session

Gavin