Ed's Update on the first day back

Great start to the new season

Great to see the Sarries U10’s Wolfpack back to full strength (bar a couple of notable exceptions) and really encouraging to see the kids haven’t lost any of their skill or enthusiasm. Sorry I didn’t get much chance to chat to a lot of you but I’ve only now remembered how hectic it is co-ordinating 30+ kids and coaches!

As I mentioned last week, yesterday was very much about getting the kids to go over a lot of what they learned last year. There was, and will be in the next few weeks, a continuing emphasis on the tackle. It’s obviously of paramount importance that we get the kids wanting to tackle and also that they are doing so safely. All the kids were re-acquainting themselves with the Tower of Power which is the very strong body position required for almost all the skills in rugby (tackling, rucking, scrum etc). In addition we also spent some time reminding them of how they should be presenting the ball when they go to ground. Their body position on the ground becomes of much greater significance when we move on to rucking which will form the basis of next Sunday’s training. Speaking of which, we have Martin from the RFU coming to run the session to ensure that the kids (and coaches!) are heading in the right direction for when we start playing fixtures next month.

You will have seen that we have 3 new trophies this year. Two of which are to encourage two qualities that are so important in team sport (Work Rate and Teamwork) and the final one – the Jacques Burger Wolfpack award – is obviously intended to encourage the kids to work hard on their defence. Jake, James and Scott were worthy winners yesterday but there was an argument to choose 3 from any number of the others.

We are still trying to coordinate with the club the correct time to train on Wednesday and Mark will be sending something out on that in the next day or so.