No rain on this parade

25 eager touch players met on Wednesday evening this week. The session began with a short warm up drill based on intelligent running and positioning. As the drill progressed it became a three attack versus two defender drill with room to add some flair into their runs, this was enjoyed by all, so much so that there an audible groan when it was called to an end to play matches (surely a first?).

The team to play Wixam were gathered together and they played a variety of teams to test their attacking and defensive ability, they stood up well to the task. They have one more week of training before their match, so we will repeat this exercise.

As usual we rotated the teams round with different Refs. Due to numbers and rotation there were a couple of five v four or four v three matches. This format really works you hard in terms of fitness, it also forces the best game out of you as there is nowhere to hide, most who played did comment that they learned a lot on positioning and running lines – so we might even use this as a training tool in the future.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been working hard to improve the respect of the players to refs and last night was a break through. While the odd player had to be reminded to let the Ref do his job, it was on the whole really good. This will give us a massive advantage as we enter tournaments as we can concentrate on how we play and won’t be pinged for anything else.

As the night wore on, the temperature dropped but the pace kept up, steam rising from each player showed how hard everyone was working.

Special mention goes to Lisa who is always running in support and has developed great handling skills and this Wednesday she was on top form, scoring her first try and then retiring early, presumably so she didn’t have to buy a jug of beer. Wally of the night goes to Paul who ran from deep on a great line, took a difficult pass and when he had the ball under control and was though decided his best course of action was to spill the ball and then fall over for no apparent reason.

Great night summed up by one player who had not been up in a while ‘you forget what a great, fun bunch the TOUCH group are, ALL of whom are really committed to playing touch’.