A long hard day for little reward

If was not the best of days for the dozen brave souls who travelled to plague ridden Suffolk on Sunday. I will refrain from a detailed technical assessment as Joe and Mike will do that, but there seemed an air of weary resignation (rather than the usual anticipation) at having to play Sudbury again and the cold overcast conditions resulted in a cold overcast performance. Well, that and Sasha playing on her own turf and as a result determinded to raise her game to the maximum! Was it something someone said?

But seriously there was certainly a spark of some sort missing all afternoon. In a way it reminded me of the visit to Ampthill, but there the opposition was weaker and we got away with it. Yesterday it wasn't and we most certainly didn't.

Its the first time we've played the FULL Sudbury team I think - and its a shame that they had lost prop in the earlier draw with Westcliff as it would have been interesting to see how strong their pack is. The main players were well known, and perhaps the main positive was that we seemed to cope with Sasha better than Westcliff had - though at a price. That price included Katie off for the rest of the day, and Rosie unable to push at prop in the game with Westcliff.

Westcliff themselves were a revelation, though. They have improved so much since Beckenham - and for what seems a "small" team have possibly strongest looking pack in the region (difficult to tell with Rosie's shoulder, but in the one contested scrum we managed NO other East side has pushed as effectively as Westcliff did!). As for their backs.... that sub 13-second sprinter that Worthing had was pedestrian compared to Westcliff centres - and as for the scrum-half... wow!

They also remain one of the friendliest teams on the circuit.

And we play them again in two weeks. It's be Randy's last game so let's make its good turnout and see how we do against this team with our full strength side. Should be an interesting game!

Phil's photographic coverage can be found here.

• Some good news about Katie. No bone breaks apparently but a "partial tear of the scapula ligament" - the one that anchors the arm. She will be unable to contact for six weeks - but that means she will be back in time for the National Cup, the Canadian visit AND the tour!