Our inspirational coach Brett (New Daddy) Taylor was leading the training this evening and was pushing the boys hard to think about the speed of the way that they play. Brett said "we need to improve the speed of organisation both in attack and defence" and was certainly gearing up the guys for a fantastic away match in Guernsey on Saturday.

With Barnes at the top of the table (and Guernsey lying 4th) the long haul trip to the Islands is likely to be one of the hardest challenges of the season as the Guernsey boys have a good record at home - although their only league defeat so far this season was when our good friends from Dorking paid a visit. That said Guernsey beat last week's opponents CS Rugby 1863 by a point in Chiswick.

Brett was keen to express that "accelerating our speed of play will give us more options and, whilst we may have had a 10 minute snooze last week, we must stay engaged and up the pace this week on our away trip".

Meanwhile I was also delighted to meet the Barnes Ladies who were being trained by Andy Pickering who was encouraging them to think about he three C's - Contact: as the pictures show there was a lot of work with the tackle bags; Continuity: dispite the contact the Ladies need to focus on keeping the ball in hand; and Communication: Let the ball carrier know where you are and avoid silly or forward passes - "if it's less than 50/50 don't pass it" said Andy.

So we are in for a great weekend of Rugby and in true Barnes fashion we will be top of the table next week too. And best of luck to the Ladies who have their first match on October 7.

And in true Peter 'Michael Fish' Boyd style it was a clear sky, six eights moon and 13 degrees celcius for training with a firm pitch !!!