"Tough day at the office"......

As ever, it seems that mornings still really don't suit our lads. I think we really need to try and think about early nights, lots of water and early starts with good breakfast on game day....!! They were never really fired up and frustratingly, we all know they can play much better than this.

Throw in serious injury to our 9, a major lack of connected attack, next to no bullets, a disorganised defence, losing three quick tries right from the off and we have a recipe for a beating - which we took. Some of the uploaded photos are there for our learning and clearly show how we didn't compete at the breakdown.

We have to now ensure we learn from this and look at how we can improve on it to come back stronger; not an easy task when we have been focussing on the basics of connected play through the forwards for the past 6-8 weeks already. We as coaches have obviously missed something and therefore need to work out exactly which elements are not firmly cemented into the team performance objectives.

Just one converted try from Dylan Jakeman was the only score for us all morning and whilst this was it, there was still some good attacking threat but unfortunately, RGC were better organised in defence and jackaled everything off the pitch which we made easy with hardly any bullets to protect our breakdown.

On a positive note - our MOTM Malachy Mannion came on to provide us with some real attacking threat from the backs. He also tackled well and was good verbally - Lining up with the other U16 backs he did not look out of place. As ever, a huge thanks to all the U15 lads who helped support us as provided us with much needed subs bench.

We go from here and will prepare for Wanderers at the weekend - this U16 team has a huge amount of talent that we just need to shape into a working team. We all know they can do this and we will now try to lift their heads and focus them on the next match - "COME ON LADS"