Southend hosted Thurrock U9s for a Tri-Fixture with Rochford. It was perfect weather for Rugby, mild, with a touch of sun and the ground wasn’t too hard either. With two Thurrock U9s teams, each team played three 15 minute games - against Southend 1s and 2s, and Rochford.

The team talk was aimed at improving our controlled aggression when we step on the pitch – and the players certainly seemed to have listened. For just their second game of contact, it looked like they’d been doing it for years. We saw some strong tackles, some good runs and put in an excellent account of ourselves.

Most impressive today was the improvement in resetting defensive lines after the tackle, compared with the previous match - something we had worked on in training last week. There was also some nice passing down the line to find someone in space too.

Special mention for this week’s Players of the week go to Ben Murphy for his improved positivity and strong ball carrying – drawing in 3/4 defenders before passing it out, Thomas Davies on his ferocious tackling technique and excellent side steps, and Keya Drotsky who won the Tackle monster with some excellent tackling. The player of the week trophies are getting harder and harder for the coaches to award, with so many players staking their claim every week and that’s a brilliant problem to have.

Next week will be our first home game of the season and the first time we’ve played Epping.