On a very chilly Sunday morning we welcomed Chess Valley RFC to Harrow for a joint training session. With all the shaded ground still frozen from the overnight frost, we headed over to the far side of the pitches to our secondary training area that has recently become our home from home. With a quick head count, we established that we had a great turn out of nearly 30 players from across the two teams. Thank you to all the parents that braved the cold to bring the players this week and especially when it was our last chance to scrub up on skills before the festival next week.

We began the training session with another boot camp work out this week because it ensures that every player is thoroughly warmed up before the rugby drills commence. It was great to see all the players working hard from the outset and Harrow set an impeccable standard for our visitors to take their lead from. We divided the players into two groups to allow for more effective use of the training areas and then got going properly with a couple of quick games of stuck in the mud. We needed to concentrate on keeping the players warm this week and so we moved swiftly on to two games of king/queen of the ring. The players really enjoyed this game and it was great to see how the Chess Valley team integrated rapidly into the joint practices.

With smiles all round, we organised the players into six teams of 5-a-side and set up three matches of Harrow versus Chess Valley. These games were roughly 7 mins each way with a short half time break and then we rotated the teams between matches to maintain variety. All of the games were played with great enthusiasm and skill levels were high from both teams. As ever, Harrow’s teamwork in attack and defence was clearly evident but most impressively this week was the number of turnovers that they forced through defensive pressure. The lessons learned against the Under 8s last week were also on show as players passed into space before being tackled and moved forward with pace.

Congratulations go to joint Players of the Week Dara, Ruben and Leo. Dara scored nearly every time he received the ball (even when he played temporarily for Chess Valley in one game), Ruben was dynamite in attack and defence and Leo scored several tries where he had to dodge every tackler on the opposition team at least twice. Overall it was a fantastic training session for all the players and I am really looking forward to next week, where I hope to see you all again.

Johnny