Teddington Yesterday

Teddington are a strong, well drilled side. Sadly, we suffered a few last minute player losses due to illness and injury which meant that we had to move players out of their usual positions in order to have cover for each, In some respects this lead to a further weakening of the teams but the boys played their hearts out nonetheless.
We played four 15 minute fixtures, and the results went as follows:

Game 1 Farnham 0 - 10 Teddington
Game 2 Farnham 0 - 14 Teddington
Game 3 Farnham 7 - 7 Teddington
Game 4 Farnham 0 - 24 Teddington

By the final game, our boys were beginning to show the effects of the lack of cover and so the score-line rather ran away from them. Despite this, they continued to throw everything they had into the game and we should all be proud of the efforts that they put in. Sadly we simply could not win or hold onto the ball and as a result, it was a 15 minute tackling session from which they emerged with their heads held high.

We also fielded a number of new players in the first and third games and all of them (new and old) performed beyond all reasonable expectations. We are continuing to build the squad and to all the newer players I have to say a big “well done”

I am certain that once we are able to attain more consistency with our positions both in training and in selection, our boys will be far more competitive in these sorts of fixtures.

Yesterday did highlight one problem for us as coaches. We have tried to book fixtures for the season so that all of the boys, regardless of their position or level of achievement within the squad, will get to play as much rugby as they could possibly want.

To do this, we have booked fixtures against A teams and against B teams separately and (as with yesterday), we played against both A’s and B’s from Teddington.

In order for this to work, we cannot afford to drop below a certain critical number – really this means about 30 boys, including 10 players willing and able to play in the front five forward positions.

If our numbers drop below this level for forthcoming fixtures, we may be forced to reduce the fixture to just one game and hold a separate training session for those who do not play

Finally (for yesterday) I’d like to thanks the catering team on behalf of the whole age group – the lunch was fantastic and I hope that no one found themselves stuck in the kitchen for too long! We really do need to get two or three volunteers to draw up a catering rota for our home fixtures so that the same people do not get stuck with this every time.