And finally...

Nottingham 48 Newbury 3


Another good looking scoreline, but as the official match report shows, another scoreline that conceals a tough contest. I left the ground happy, but at half time I have to admit all I could think about was how could Nottingham be struggling? Newbury are ten League places below us and although it showed in the quality of play you'd have been hard put to tell that from the half time score or the determination on show from Newbury.


That's the trouble with rugby in National One. At the top you have teams like Nottingham trying to model themselves on full time Premiership sides and at the bottom you have teams that are modelled on traditional club sides. We are by no means a full time professional side but we are getting that way and the training regime is tough, particularly for those players who also have jobs.


You can often tell the difference from looking at the props. Ours are heavily muscled from working out: many of the props from lower placed teams look like the sworn enemies of salad. When the kids train on Wednesdays I have seen our team lifting weights in the garage that houses the grass cutters, so we are not the most luxurious of teams but in past years we have been visited by teams fielding props that looked like they seldom lifted anything heavier than a pie,and the difference shows.


There is a proposal drifting about to make the best National One teams part of a second division Premiership. As a supporter of a top National One team I am all in favour of that as it means we should get more funding. Unfortunately there is always some sort of proposal drifting about and it seldom seems to come to much.

The sad truth about rugby in England is that it just doesn't attract the crowds to bring in the sponsorship it needs.