Shield exit is disappointing
A lthough Saturday’s defeat to Malton & Norton and our exit from the Yorkshire Shield is disappointing - it was a worthwhile exercise in blooding a few new players and seeing if they’re potentially up to playing first-team rugby.
Given that we had to make a lot of changes, the performance was always going to be disjointed and that proved to be the case.
What did disappoint me was that in the first 30 minutes it appeared Malton wanted it more than us.
After that, we managed to get a foothold, but we ended up coming up short.
There were some notable performances and positive points despite the defeat.
Luke Brown played very well, it was good to see Jonty and Jordan Holloway play together with Jordan getting his first full 80 minutes under his belt.
It was great to see Jack Anderson back on the field after a period out with injury, and Sam Pollard and Tom Read stepped up to the plate.
We need to switch our focus immediately back to league action with a big derby game at home to Driffield this weekend.
It’ll be nice to go up against their coach Kyle Dench - who I have known since he was a kid.
I have a lot of time for Kyle -he’s my captain for the Bridlington Exiles game I play every Boxing Day for the Hutchinson Memorial Trophy and it’ll be good to go up against him as coaches come Saturday too.
The World Cup ultimately ended up in disappointment for England as South Africa put together a gameplan and a performance that we couldn’t live with.
They thoroughly deserved to win the World Cup and I hope young people who saw the tournament on terrestrial TV will be inspired to take up the sport that we love going forward.