It's amazing to think that we're halfway through our season already ... it's Christmas and we can all enjoy a well-deserved break. 

In truth, pre-season was disappointing. We had a clash with our training and the club's Turn Up and Play Summer Touch programme, we didn't get the numbers to do any meaningful work on our patterns for this season. This became obvious in our first few fixtures when we weren't quite at the races. We also had some tough opposition from the likes of Haslemere and Teddington.

By mid-October we had, in all kinds of fixtures, played 8 but won only 2 and confidence might easily have taken a knock. But our performances have improved and a team learns more about itself from losses than wins. Since that disappointing League defeat at Gosport we have won 8 from 8 and we can look forward to the second half of the season with renewed optimism and confidence.

This optimism is based on solid foundations. The players are improving individually, training as a single squad and playing lots of games as a squad has produced pride in the shirt and a real sense of teamwork on the park. In game after game, substitutions are made yet the patterns remain the same, everyone knows what they need to do.

What are the results of this? Not just the match results ... attendance in training, commitment in games, lads playing with smiles on their faces. Of a 30-strong squad no less than 20 of them have scored tries ... 64 tries in all in just 16 matches, and 7 of those 16 were only 10, 15 or 20 minutes each way, rather than a full 70 minutes! 

Hand in hand with the performances has been sportsmanship, something of which I am enormously proud. We don't have a win-at-all-costs mentality, we lend players to our opposition to get a fair game on, we balance our strength rather than produce a meaningless, one-sided game where nobody learns. We play hard and fair, we respect the opposition and their coaches' objectives.

Only three of our twelve outtings this half-season have been at home, at Fortress Anstey, due to the rebuild of the Finnimore Pavilion. I'm really grateful for the support of the parents in trekking all over Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire and Oxfordshire. The reward is that there are nine home fixtures from January through to April, and only three away trips - not counting the tour to Tuscany! Another reward is that we've played against opposition we've not met before which keeps us all fresh!

Also freshening things up have been the new faces in the squad this season. Krishna Gurung, Ed Benn, Oscar Jermyn, Kit Trigg and most recently Tom Brookes have all impressed and settled in well. They've also gone some way to address the forwards/backs imbalance we've had for a few years.

I'm looking forward to the New Year and the second half of our season - hope you are too! Have a great Christmas and see you back on Thursday 5th January 2012.