Monday

Wake up at 6.10am. Not good. Still feeling bad from the Saturday night. Go about the normal ablutions with no great haste. By 6.50am I am already in the car on the way to Durham School. When I get to school it is 7.40am. Why do I have to live in Morpeth? I make myself a cup of tea and finish my English essay for first lesson. After Chapel on a morning I have English then a double free. I have no work so go into town for a bacon sandwich and play on the X-Box when I get back before going to lunch at 12.15pm. At 1.30pm that’s when rugby starts. We have a quick chat about what we will do in training then we get on with it. Its nice and easy to begin with. Just some simple handling drills that we take forward by adding a few shapes into before adding a defender in. From here we look at body positions in the contact area, especially the ruck. This is then turned into a game with one man taking the ball in with two ruckers and a counter rucker trying to steal the ball. This gets rather competitive and we turn it into a small pitch game with larger numbers. We run this drill for about 20 minutes before ending with a light jog. My last two lessons finish uneventfully and I leave for home at 5pm.

Tuesday

Another early start. I have two lessons in the morning and one in the afternoon today so am able to finish at 4pm. A good day. Today we do not have rugby but we are expected to do weights in our time as there is not time within normal rugby sessions. As I have gotten home earlier I decide to go to the gym and work on my arms, chest and shoulders. After a good hard session I head home again and finish my prep.

Wednesday

These early starts are killing me! Surely I cannot keep this up. I have three lessons in the morning meaning that I have a double free in the afternoon. This will allow me to go home straight after rugby at 2.30pm. The morning is extremely boring with the lessons seeming to drag on forever. When it finally came round to rugby I could not contain myself. I was so happy to be out of the classroom. It turned out to be a very tough session. Lots of contact. We started again with handling drills and running shapes but this progressed very quickly into the numbers game. Mr.Kime would call out two numbers and the corresponding amount of attackers and defenders would run out. This ran for about 25 minutes and was very tiring. After this we had more rucking practice and then looked at some defensive systems to try and combat the very tough, forward driven Woodhouse Grove who we would be playing at the weekend.

Thursday

Possibly my favourite day! A double free for my first two lessons! But wait. Things just get better. I remember that economics is not on as all of the teachers from the Economics department have taken a trip with the Business Studies set to see the Nissan Factory in Sunderland. I do not have a lesson until 3pm so do not go into school until 1.30pm as that’s when rugby starts. Today is an easy session with us just running through our forwards and backs moves separately before coming together.

Friday

Today is just a normal school day with no rugby apart from a quick team meeting at morning break with Mr.Kime to talk through the team again and what we will be doing the next day. When Evening Chapel finishes all I can think about is the match the next day…

Saturday

The match. The warm up is just like any other with the backs and forwards separating and then coming together. But there is a different tension in the air. We know that after last year in which we were beat heavily we would have to really up our game today. We kick off to the them and straight away turn the ball over. A good start. But the game is very stop start with us giving too many penalties away from coming off our feet. In particular its one player but I won’t name names! We go into half time with an 8-3 lead. We were certainly the better side and it’s a good feeling to be leading against Woodhouse Grove. In the second half we weather an absolute storm of short forward runs but the penalties kill us and they manage to score from a 5 meter scrum. They miss the conversion and with 4 minutes to go the score is 11-11. Then a miracle!

There flanker tries to kick the ball and gives it straight to our winger who motors home in the corner. 16-11! We win the game!