Monday 15th September

My alarm went off bright and early at 7.30 so I could make the painful journey into the club, the morning after a loss the day before is not the easiest morning to be getting up early! The physios needed to assess me as my knee was a bit swollen. Icing it did not seem to work too well last night but the food I had with some of the lads including Riki Flutey, Tim Payne, Mark Robinson and Joe Worsley made me feel slightly better.

After my knee assessment and having got the news I wanted that there was just swelling and no real damage, I had a brief massage and then headed to my nightmare - the ice baths. I look for every way to get out of it but I have still to find a successful one. We are ticked off the list when the 10 minutes in icy flowing water has been completed. Flowing water for that extra bit of pain!!

The final part of our recovery at Wasps is a 10 minute cycle to get the blood flowing again. Then a short session in the video analysis room looking at the game from yesterday - I will do a more detailed analysis tomorrow.

Normal, mundane jobs follow. Car insurance and making sure my playing insurance is topped up enough are my main jobs for today. A quiet afternoon is finished off with my second weekly nightmare, a trip to the supermarket to grab the essentials needed for a tough week ahead which, right now, I am in no way looking forward to......

Tuesday 16th September

Another early start this morning as I needed more treatment on my knee which has been causing me a bit of niggle. I just hope it clears up pretty soon. I had another massage too - not for the relaxation of it but to try to free up the area so I might be able to function a bit better in training.

At times the physio room looks like a hospital ward with a number of players carrying knocks from the first two weekend's games. It always seems to be the same early season as you come into a new tournament on the back of a summer containing mostly weights and conditioning based sessions. The first bits of contact you get in 'anger' always seem to leave more of a mark than later in the year. 

We had a lengthy analysis session and reviewed what we did well and what we didn't do very well; this week there seemed to be too many of the latter and not enough of the former which goes some way to explaining our last minute loss on Sunday. Straight out of there onto the training pitch for an individual skills session where I focussed on my kicking which I felt was an area of my game which could have been better on the weekend. A sharp hour was followed by some fitness which worked up our hunger for lunch!!

Even more video work ended the day and I went home and rested up and preparing for our big training day on Thursday which will lead us nicely into the game against Northampton at the weekend. My day off will probably be spent having a look at the threats Northampton pose to us so I can take that into the weekend too.......

Wednesday 17th September

OFF!!

Thursday 18th September

Today was always going to be a busy day as we have not done a great deal of training this week due to the number of injury worries we have in the squad.

We started with separate unit sessions where the backs and forwards split. As backs, we don't have a clue what the forwards do - I certainly don't have any idea but as a back line we practice defending what we think the team we are going to face at the weekend will do - this week Northampton. We will then reverse it and look to attack defenders who will defend as Northampton do. We try to find the areas we feel we can attack them in.

Over the first couple of weeks you can say they have had a mixed start but played a very physical and confrontational game against Worcester in their first home game of the season and we are expecting much the same from them this weekend.

We went straight into the weights rooms from the pitch for a brief power session followed by a quick lunch. The media guys were in today asking us our thoughts about the upcoming game and how we see it going. Only a brief time with the media, then down to the physio room to get strapped before going out for team training. Normally it is split between attack and defence and today was much the same. I ended up finishing my preparation for the weekend with some goal kicking and punting.

All that is left now in this short week is the captain's run tomorrow which is just a case of dotting the i's and crossing the t's before resting up and mentally preparing for what is a massive game for us now.