READY FOR SEVENOAKS

We are back! To think it was four months since our last league game doesn’t seem possible, but lots of work has been going into the team to prepare them for this campaign, and as they say: time flies when your having fun! One of our focuses has been to get the players in better physical shape than last season. Sam Sterling and Tristan King have been taking a section of all sessions to help the players develop their speed and conditioning. This is to complement the squad gym sessions that they run and programme in CT PT. We will find out tomorrow how well this has gone, but from my perspective the players have been working extremely hard in every session and I believe they have become more comfortable operating at a higher intensity for longer.

The new players that Taff Gwilliam and I have brought in have increased the competition for every shirt in the 1st XV and Pilgrims. Most of the new players are already beginning to look like part of the furniture and Alex Veale and I had lots of difficult conversations on Wednesday with very good players who haven’t made the 1st XV this week. I feel like this is an indication of a strong and healthy squad and has moved our environment forward and those players who narrowly missed out have the chance to further their case in the Pilgrims friendly game at Sevenoaks.

That brings me to the weekend. We were very disappointed with our performance in this fixture last season, and we felt that we did not give a good account of ourselves. All our work through the summer has been leading up to this point and the players are raring to go, the preparation is finished, its game time

Matt Corker