With just a few days away from the start of the first of three pre season games at home to East London, i thought i would share with you what’s been going on with senior rugby so far .

We spoke at the end of last season about expectations for this season and this left us with with a number of things to achieve leading up to the season .

The lads were bought in at the middle of May and was fitness tested and was all sent away with a program to work on over the 8 weeks we had of , all the boys bought in and have used there time wisely and got them selfs stronger and fitter .

Something we spoke about , over this period of was how we want to play and expectations in how the vision of the game should be played , with this we come up with a new game plan which is very player focused and as coaches give them a basic skeleton to work with and have been working hard to create a platform that works for all of us . A very unique philosophy in attack and defence that yet again has come with players input .
Leadership

Micky James enters his 10th season as skipper of Romford rugby club , with Aidan Mersh vice skipper, something we also spoke about is having effective leadership , so have created a senior leadership group with Karl Preston (Cecil), Barney Savil , Ian Semain all helping and making sure that the group of boys we have are very tight and we are all working to create the best environment possible to play rugby .

Coaches

There has been a few changes , unfortunately Dave Gilmore has taken a step back , but with still come in from time to time to run guest session. Paul cook who is also the lead for Robert clack rugby academy , has changed his role this season and will oversee backs , skills , and player development , DOR Stephen Barfoot with come and do some coaching and will help with our defence , player ownership with our line outs which is overseen by Aidan Mersh and Micky James ,Jeff wood will oversee the scrum , my self will oversee the attack , and conditioning, Ross skinner with stay on board as our sports therapist and a new addition that was appointed yesterday will be Sam mullins coming in from Warick university to help with performance analysis.

New players

An area we lacked was a strength and depth in the squad , we have worked really hard to bring people in this Pre season always good having new guys in but from a point of view of the first team we have to look at who we bring in and how they can make an impact on the team / squad - at present we have 15 new additions to potentially be in contention for the 1st team /squad These are new players, players returning to the club after going away and playing for other teams , and players coming through our youth system throughout the club (players announcement in the coming week ) these boys have coming in stepped up and got involved in the culture of the team . We have also had some new additions that will come into our senior squads , and are making massive strides and working hard to get up to spend and before long with be pushing for a shirt , and who knows a first team shirt maybe just round the corner . Further more we are hoping to get a development side out this season and hoping to play these games on Friday evening focusing on an under 23 side will give current first and senior teams players opportunity to go and get some leadership skills in these games working with some of younger guys .

Training

Training has been fantastic this season a
Massive bye in , a consistent amount of numbers at training and the level of intensity has been great , we have worked extremely hard on our conditioning ,our core skills and game plan , and we have found away that works for us to get these guys executing under tough conditions and still get positive outcomes . We have created a very game based environment , using different games to condition what our focus of the session is around .

Aims and objectives

With the squad we have the belief the boys have and the buzz is something that has been missing in previous seasons , we have our aims and objectives as a group and we believe that we can mix it with anyone is this league , a tough pre season will determine where we are and where we need to work on if we want to achieve the things we want to this season . We have a very difficult start to the season with an away trip to relegated Saffon warden and which is a hard place to go and play , but we believe we have what it takes to get a result on the road first up .

Would like to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors for your continued support , our fantastic committee for there continuous hard work , although players have been off these guys have been working hard and haven’t stopped to make sure we have the best opportunities this season all support is very much appreciated .

Jordan Wigham