Pitchside at Bigside

On Saturday we played a passionate Cranleigh side. A fire and brimstone game, to nil Cranleigh was a great achievement considering they were in our half for most of the second period. However, the game demonstrated the changing nature of the front row and how the front row has gone from powerful meatheaded players to more skilful, well rounded footballers. One got an interception try and the 2 others (including myself!) with good assists using silky hands and offloading. You can draw parallels from the performance on saturday to current successful front rowers. The pugnacious Brian Moore and Keith Wood-esque players have been replaced with the dynamism, agility and ball-handling ability of the likes of Sinckler, Coles and Furlong. The changing nature of the sport requires more multi-dimensional players that can adapt to a plethora of situations such as passes 'out the back' and stepping into back's moves. However, the basic staples of scrummaging and lineout work are stil

The mighty 4th XV had a tough challenge on wednesday- but perhaps not in a conventional way. Playing Wilsons 1st XV, while somnambulant, the Whitgift outift proved a far more skilled and organised team than their yellow counterparts. The game however highlighted the growing discrepencies in refereeing- especially the laws of the breakdown. Seeing as we had a Whitgift referee, to even the game up he decided to be particularly biased at the breakdown to Wilsons. While this perhaps didn't have any ramifications (other than forcing Will Griffiths to actually counterruck rather than jackal) it proved to me the importance of understanding the referee in rugby. National coaches such as Eddie Jones often allude to 'playing the referee'. The real problem is no referee views the breakdown laws (when a tackler should release, when the ball-carrier should release and when an illegal act is committed purely to slow down the ball) the same. While over exaggerated, the Whitgift referee en

Last Thursday I played away at Campion in the Schools Cup. A hotly contested and visceral affair. Whitgift eventually ran out 8-6 winners against a well coached Campion side. However, this game highlighted to me the importance of the so-called home advantage, not just in the obvious sense of raucous support but also the pitch dimensions and familiarity of the venue. We played on a small claggy, pitch which limited our ability to play wide; our problems were compounded through lack of carriers as our main 8 was injured and we needed to make yards through the middle. However, I would've done exactly the same. It gave Campion the highest possible chance of winning and evened out the game. In England's poor run of form in early 2018 they only lost one test at home, to Ireland who ran out Grand Slam winners in the 2018 Six Nations and who are arguably the best side in the world at the moment. Twickenham has only seen 2 defeats in Jones' reign and can definitely be classed as a