As you will remember from our end of season Presentations Day, one of our objectives for this season was to strike a better balance between what we call 1st XV and development squad matches; we wanted to improve the availability to game time ratio for the whole squad.

Last season we introduced three types of fixture and agreed the format with all the players:-

League - the strongest XV would be selected, those on the bench were not guaranteed game time.

Friendly - everyone who turned up would get game time, usually at least one half.

Development - players not selected for league matches would be given priority for a full game, stronger players would be rested. Everyone selected would get game time.

This alone has worked well to even up game time for all, but it proved difficult to get development fixtures.

In the half season to Christmas we will have played 12 fixtures or tournaments - 4 "league" type matches, 6 friendlies and 2 development games. So everyone in the squad had access to at least 8 games. We deliberately took the whole squad to Windsor's A tournament, even though the opposition played their A teams only. We finished as creditable runners up!

This compares favourably with other clubs with similar sized squads - Farnborough will have played 9 matches, Farnham, Petersfield and Portsmouth only 7 each. Winchester will have played 20, but they have 48 players in their squad and can play A and B fixtures simultaneously.

Our fixture list for the post-Christmas half of the season is also balanced - 5 "League" type fixtures*, 5 friendlies and 4 development games.

* In addition to our 3 League matches we are likely to field a strong XV against Tottonians and Redingensians, they are effective warm ups, for half of those games at least.

The other imbalance to mention is the high ratio of away matches we've played this season. I want to thank all parents for bearing with us whilst our changing facility is being rebuilt. We've had a lot of aways, we've also travelled further than normal in order to play clubs which are outside of Hampshire. The good news is that our remaining league matches are all at home! More good news is that the tour to Italy comes closer day by day ... I can't wait!!