I would like to combine a brief report on the tour with our thanks to Dave for his huge efforts in organising it again this year. We have received some great feedback and some of the players felt it was even better than last year. We are already planning the next one!

Taking a group of 30 boys of 15 and 16 away for 3 days could have been a nightmare - but it was nothing of the sort. All of them behaved extremely well and were a credit to themselves, their families and their club. I have been asked to pass that on from the club who hosted us on Sunday, Wooton Bassett. I have already passed on our thanks to them for their hospitality and their plaque will be taking pride of place in the clubhouse soon.

The tour began with a training session at the club on Friday morning, followed by the usual excellent food provided by Mik at the clubhouse. The coach was big enough to get all the bags, kit and paraphernalia into the luggage compartment; though we ended up stuck in some horrible traffic jams around Bracknell, we arrived more or less in reasonable time at the centre. Our 'leader' for the weekend was Kirstie, who despite playing for Sutton and Epsom turned out to be a good choice, being more 'rugby aware' than most PGL people would have been. The accommodation was very good we thought, the venue having been a hotel and a conference centre before PGL took it over. There were extensive grounds, and we were able to make use of those for a fitness training session.

Training session results:
Forwards: Winner: Angus, joint second: Charlie, Diogo
Backs: Winner - Cameron, runner-up James McGrath

Kirstie then organised some evening activities, followed by free time for the boys to spend around the centre. An early night would have been wise, given the traumatically early - for teenagers - PGL breakfast schedule. Of course that didn't happen, and the state of the rooms and players in the morning bore only a passing resemblance to the night before. The coaches were just about able to round up the squad to make it down to the dining hall in time.

Saturday was spent doing the initiative, team building and physical challenge activities that we had picked PGL for. In the morning we did various initiative exercises (including a universally poor effort at rocket-building) and a trapeze exercise (jump for a trapeze from a pole about 8 metres up). After lunch at PGL - the food was not the high point of the trip! - we resumed with Archery and the 'crate challenge' in the afternoon.

Touch rugby was followed by dinner, a break then more touch rugby and 'wide games' in the woods for which the players applied ludicrous amounts of camouflage. Some of them were still wearing it (or bits of it) the next day, which says much about the thoroughness of their washing. In the evening we had the use of a table-tennis room and a theatre where most of the squad took up the option of watching 'Match of the Day' together.

On Sunday morning we had more activities - a frantic set of games of 'Aeroball' - a cross between basketball and volleyball on trampolines, if you can imagine that - and the 'Jacobs Ladder' challenge of getting a team of 3 to the top of an increasingly difficult rope and logs structure. Some great examples of teamwork were seen in the latter.

Lunch and some frantic packing, followed by a coaches sweep of the rooms which resulted in several items of clothing and at least one phone. The coach was a bit late and with the clocks having changed, we needed to get into the games quickly when arriving at Wooton Bassett. The opposition were very welcoming indeed, but their squad contained some very big guys and there was some apprehension among the players before the games. This turned out to be misplaced, and the Wimbledon boys soon showed that our faith in their abilities was well-founded.

These are shortened match reports, without try-scorers etc, because my notes ended up in the First-Aid bag and that is now at the club! More detailed ones to follow.

Match 1: Wimbledon A 37 - 5 Wooton Bassett

Early exchanges were even - the WB scrum looking particularly formidable - and they had some very big, strong runners. After our opening try where Sam Codling blasted through to score under the posts and Archie converted, one of those runners broke through 3 tackles to take the score to 7-5. However from that point Wimbledon only got stronger, both in the forwards and backs. Soon our scrum was holding theirs and our backs were dragging the WB defence from left to right with superior passing and running, creating gaps for some great running tries. For the forwards, the highlight was a superb, 40-yard rolling maul which took us right to their try line and although held up, got us a try from the 5-yard scrum. With 6 tries and a penalty, Wimbledon ran out clear winners.

Match 2: Wimbledon B 13 - 10 Wooton Bassett

With the other planned match, against Marlborough, having to be cancelled (Marlborough having folded a couple of weeks ago at U16), Wooton sportingly agreed to play 2 games against us. This meant of course that their 'A' side would be facing our 'B's, so we knew this would be a tough game. This turned out to be close and hard fought, but in the best rugby spirit, and if anything was an even finer game to watch than the first one. Wooton ran in an early try and were able to use their strong runners to force another, but Wimbledon responded with gritty forward play and some excellent moves in the backs, to take us to 10 - 10 with less than 5 minutes to go. A penalty not far inside the Wooton half left Archie with a lot to do from the kick, but he duly slotted it superbly to take us into a 13 -10 lead that we retained.

The hospitality in the Wooton Bassett clubhouse was excellent, this was a great friendly rugby club and we have extended an invitation for them to visit us in Wimbledon at some point in the future. When they demonstrated their local tradition of players downing a half-yard of a noxious mixture (tomato juice, orange juice, lemonade and, yes, a pickled onion), we could not pass up the challenge. Damian "chug monster" Cherry-Fox duly stepped forward to do his club proud once more.

With the light gone and a long coach journey home to face, we left Wooton Bassett in good spirits after the 2 excellent games we had just played. The team joined in with an hour or so of (not to be repeated here) rugby songs, though many of them were crashing out left right and centre after a hard weekend. Back to Wimbledon for 7:30 and the end of a great tour.

On to next year!

Martin