First off, a call for help from parents and kids. *** We need more numbers *** Please ask your kids to bring friends down to training. Building up the squad size will be beneficial for everyone. If you have any other ideas about how we can recruit for this team, we'd love to hear from you - contact the TMs Cecile or Miriam

Key points so far

• Won our first game of the season against good oppo. and it was a good mini tour on the bus
• Great efforts at training; players and skills are progressing individually
• Team is gelling on a personal level, and the lads seem to get on well with each other
• Some new players have joined the group and it's been a big boost
• Robert Fotofili (Zack's father) has stepped up to assist with coaching and has been great
• Thursday skills sessions have been a huge success for lads who attended

Thing to work on

1. Consistent numbers at training have been a struggle - have only had one session with close to a full team. Have not had the numbers at any session to be able to practice a full scrum yet!!!!
2. Our tackling is still unreliable - so up to Christmas, now that ground is softer, this will be an area of focus at every session
3. Set pieces - from 1 to multiple phases, lineouts and scrums looking at setting up some simple plays that can be used in games
4. The Simple Stuff - support, passing, catching, running :-)
5. At home stuff - fitness, fitness, fitness
6. Social event to be organised - catch up with the TMs and help out

General Comments
It's hard for a 13/14 year old to get out of bed on a Saturday morning, and now that Winter is Coming it's going to be even tougher. Would really appreciate it if parents could dig in a little and 'support' their babies by kicking their backsides out of bed in time to get to training. We'll be posting training attendance numbers at Christmas, and all the lads could do with attending more sessions.

We have covered a lot of stuff since the start of September, working hard on passing and catching at pace, support running, and the contact area. Kids have been working really hard, and it showed in the game played so far. We would like to arrange some more friendlies for the lads, and the TMs will contact you about this over the next few weeks. The only challenge to this is consistency of numbers - so please work with the TMs here as a few more games will help the team significantly.

Unfortunately we lost a couple of kids to illness and injury, with Aron putting his hand out to stop a fall (DON'T DO THAT LADS) and breaking his arm, poor Henry with a bad flu losing lots of weight and Martin deciding that he had to eject food from every body orifice available. Luckily Henry and Martin seem to be have recovered, and Aron should be better than new after Christmas.

Team Managers have been working hard, successfully organising the mini tour to Bishop's Stordford, doing lots of behind the scenes work, and chasing parents and kids to use Pitchero :-) It's a thankless job sometimes, so a big cheer out to Cecile and Miriam!!!! I can honestly say that this team would fall apart without them.

Remember, this club runs on volunteers, and they need all the help they can get. This group have always been great in that regard, stepping up to help at the cafe and organising and distributing food at home games.

The biggest single thing that you, as a parent, can do is to keep us informed. Pitchero (although far from perfect) is very helpful and simple in this regard.

• Let us know by CoP Wednesday please that your lad will be at training
• Let us know - weeks in advance - when they will be at a match

This one simple thing can really help TMs and Coaches plan and adjust as necessary. Of course we would like every kid at training every Saturday and definitely at every match, but we understand that life is life, so the next best thing is just to let us know.

Thanks for your support of the team and club so far. Keep up the good work!!!!

If you got this far, well done. Here's that small reward; some photos of the lads taken at a few training sessions. I like the tower of power ones :-)