Postponement will give Maids extra time to get players back to full fitness
One silver lining from Saturday’s COVID-related postponement against Wimbledon is that Maidenhead RFC will have an extra week to nurse a few of their injured players back to full fitness.
Maids have been beset by injury problems pretty much from the opening day of the season, when they lost narrowly at home to North Walsham.
Since then they’ve been forced to field inexperienced XVs, something director of rugby Myke Parrott believes will stand the club in good stead for future seasons – and
even the second half of this campaign.
A couple of their more experienced forwards, number 8 Dave Cole and Ross Muil, were due to return for Saturday’s clash with Wimbledon at Braywick before all matches were postponed by the league in a bid to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Maids will return to action at London & South East Premier Division leaders Dorking RFC on January 8.
“It's going to give clubs the opportunity to get players back from injury,” said Parrott.
“We had a couple of players coming back for us on Saturday. We had Dave Cole available again which is massive for us, and Ross Muil was also back in the mix with a couple of other lads returning as well.
“We were keen to play. That said, we still have a long injury list, we still have plenty of players out, so that will give us an extra week to get some of these boys back. But other clubs who maybe haven’t had as many injuries as us, we might have started to get an advantage because it felt like a few other clubs were starting to feel our early season pain, but that’s rugby, that’s how it is. Hopefully everyone across all the teams in the league get back and fit and firing in
January and we can all crack on.”
He added: “We never lose. We win or we learn. We’ve done a lot of learning this year and that’s cool.
“We’ve learned a lot about the league, we’ve learned a lot about our opposition, and we’ve learned a lot about our current squad and where we might need to add some depth.
“It’s been a really good experience in the new league. It’s tough, but it’s cool and we embrace the challenge and we’re very much enjoying our foray into the London leagues. It’s been a great test for us.”