A few thoughts from yesterday...

It is interesting to see how much Ampthill are improving. Despite having one or two of their leading lights absent (apparently) the opening exchanges, and most of the match, was better contested than previous games. Unfortunately rugby is a cruel game, and relatively small differences between teams can often be exaggerated in the final score, especially if you cannot break out of defence, so even though the improvement was clear for those of us watching it has yet to have an impact on the actual score.

They are certainly wiseing up at penalties - as we learnt for their first try - a bit of a sucker punch that! Actually, one is actually slightly tempted to suggest that maybe giving away a 10m penalty for not retiring might be better than waving them through when caught out in situations like that.

Other highlights included several memorable Alcock v Alcock confrontations - especially the one where Alcock "minor" denied Alcock "major" a certain try with a tackle into touch (see below!). Also I wonder - is Nikki close to being one of Ampthill's top points scorers this season? Natalie has also got the "piggy-back" method of tackling down to a fine art now, as Sasha found out... rather like a lion leaping onto the back of a passing wilderbeast I thought...
Anyway - it was good fun, pressure-off, confidence building stuff. There were a few errors early on that we would not have got away with against higher level opposition - blind passes into no-where, passes not going to hand and so on - so there is still room to improve, but the main plus was getting through an entire weekend with as many fit players as we started. Here's hoping that continues!

More pictures here.