A game of two halves...

It was not a great first half, was it? Perhaps best forgotten - but then maybe not because this is not the first time this season we have started a game half asleep, and then paid the price. We have to stop doing this - do we need to look at our pre-match routines, maybe?

Okay - we are suffering from more long-term injuries at present than we have ever had before, but our patched-together pack of forwards actually did very well, at the set-pieces at least. But from the start of the game - where we gifted Kettering a three-player overlap by not being ready for our own kick-off - through to the "full and frank exchange of views" at half-time it was, lets be honest, a bit of a shambles and probably the worst we have played since the visit of Mid-Warwickshire in 2005, if not before. 34-0 was not an unfair scoreline by an means.

It took a passionate appeal from Katie at half-time, plus a talking to from Simon, to turn things around. And what a different team that produced, only narrowly shaded out 10-5 over a second period that was far more even - and which, if the ball had gone to hand just once or twice, might have gone the other way.

We can play well, but half the time this season we are choosing not to. We need to start games like we finish them, and be fired up from the start of the first half, not the start of the second. And to do that we need some good turnouts at training - including next Sunday when we want everyone not at county to attend. So that gives us three sessions to put this right - before we face Paviors...