Once again we were able to field 3 teams on Sunday at Hoe Lane and had 46 of our boys playing a great deal of rugby. With some ground frost, fog and the vagueries of our wonderful Pitchero system - with update messages for new KO times not filtering through correctly - it was a little chaotic at the start of the morning, especially with some overnight illness that required some player movement.

We welcomed Shelford for two of our scheduled friendly fixtures and it is probably fair to say that they were stronger than expected. It is always difficult playing new clubs to gauge relative strengths and whilst their stated philosophy has been to play mixed sides, the opposition coaches admitted afterwards that, whilst they had only travelled with 26 players, these were at the stronger end of the squad. Contrast this to local rivals Welwyn, who we knew all about and would also prove a tough fixture.

Shelford Part I kicked off first and Hertford knew they were in a battle, shipping an early try. However, for the next 15 minutes or so we competed well and bossed the possession; unfortunately, we made a number of uncharacteristic handling errors that did not convert this supremacy into tries. Heads dropped at this stage, which coupled with indiscipline led to further scores against us before we finally grabbed a try of our own. The talk at HT was on how we could close the gap but Shelford made several good replacements with fresh legs and at the end we were comprehensively beaten 5-70. Still, the boys never gave up and continued to try to find a way through up until the last whistle.

Over on the 2nd Team pitch, Hertford were having a ding-dong first half of rugby, with our guests from Welwyn taking a 15-10 lead at HT. In this case, the team rallied well and the quality showed in the second period, whilst Welwyn were out on their legs, leading to a comfortable 35-15 win at the end.

Back to the Tennis Court pitch and to Shelford Part II - in reality, against the same strong squad of players. Again, we were initially on the back foot but had better balance across the team to hold the scores to within a single try by HT. Shelford made their expected changes that again bolstered the team, but we did hand them a few easy tries through sloppy defending and missed tackles. The spirit remained throughout though and we finished by scoring the game’s last try, although this only reduced the deficit to 10-40.

So a tough weekend for a lot of the boys but they can all look back with pride on a successful first half of the 2017/18 season, where they have all moved forward in developing their rugby skills under our dedicated team of coaches.

Thank you also to our 3 referees this week - Graham McGoun, Paul Creasey and Paul Buchan - and to those parents helping to set up and ‘dismantle’ pitches.

Finally, a short update on Arthur Pez: he is making slow but good progress, moving around on crutches, but with a need for patience as sensations return back to the injured leg. We wish him and his family well on his continued recovery.

Looking into the new year, we will plan to run a training session on Thursday 4 January as we have our first fixtures in 2018 on 14 January. Following the confusion leading up to Sunday, only new messages will be created in Pitchero so that everyone can identify updates - if in doubt, the details will always be correct in the actual fixture tab.

It just leaves me to wish you all a peaceful and merry Christmas and very best wishes for 2018.

Andy