After the excellent performance all-round last weekend at the Middlesex Festival, this week gave us the opportunity to work on the some of the weaker areas that we identified to improve the team's performance even more. We also had the pleasure of a pat on the back from the whole club with a tunnel to celebrate the Development team's trophy (well done again team!).

After a lengthy spell of tackling british bulldog to get the juices flowing and prepare the boys for some physical action, we moved on to a game that required them to receive and pass the ball quickly and then under pressure. Whilst the first few run throughs were a little rusty (to say the least) with most of the players forward-passing, by the end of this aspect of the session there was a significant improvement in performance, with some high-quality receiving and passing from most of the team. After this we moved on to a numbered gate game to work on tackling and gaining possession of the ball, whilst Gavin and Steve worked specifically on the competition for the ball at a break-down in preparation for next season, when the game will open up more. A quick burst of tackle bag training followed, just to reaffirm the use of the shoulder rather than flailing arms for the tackle before we finally moved into a game.

Once again, we saw some excellent try-saving tackles, and some epic, jinking runs from a number of players, and it is good to see that a number of the team have worked out that if you run towards the tackle, you reduce your opponent's momentum and put them under pressure; we just need to make sure that we stay on-side at the tackle in our enthusiasm to make the next tackle! There is still some arm-flail tackling happening but it is getting better across the board, and a final score of 8 tries to 8 reflected an evenly matched and well contested game.

Player of the day went to James for some excellent running and tackling throughout the entire session.

We have a break next week for the u15s and u16s festival and we are closed for Easter the following week; the next session should be at home on 12 Apr.

Many thanks and see you in a few weeks!