20 September 2018

The rugby season has started with a bang as Abingdon School took on Colston’s and Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, Bristol in a triangular fixture on the first weekend of term at U13 A & B, U14 A & B, U15 A & B, U16 A & B, U18 A & B. This was highly successful allowing large numbers of our pupils to play and represent the school on the first weekend of the term. It certainly blew early season cobwebs away and set us up for the rest of the term.

Last Saturday saw the Middle School and Upper School take on Cranleigh in a new block fixture. All teams had to play away due to the hard ground at Abingdon. There were 14 fixtures in total with our U14 A-D team fairing on the better side of the results, but all matches in the U14s, U15s and U16s being equally close and fair. Our seniors had tough matches against a good senior set up with the 1st team suffering a loss. However, credit to Cranleigh who has a very good side this season and it was a marker fixture for our boys who competed well in challenging moments.

There have been lower school fixtures versus Cokethorpe this week with the U12s who played on Waste Court in their first match. And 3rd, 4th XV, U16C, U15C, U14C matches versus Bloxham against their B teams with some very positive performances from the boys.

A big drive this year in all teams has been the development of leadership, responsibility, and team work in training and matches. There is a huge emphasis on up-skilling and developing the boys independence and skills.

The Abingdon 5 is an example of this with all pupils and staff warming up each session using the curriculum content aiming to ensure basic core skills are developed the way we want our boys to play the game of rugby union.

It has been wonderful to welcome former England Rugby elite age group pathway coaches John Fletcher and Russell Earnshaw to Abingdon School over the past couple of weeks. Both coaches are among the best in their field in the world. Pupils have been coached, staff up-skilled, and parents addressed in a very well attended parents evening workshop. The Rugby Club values, goals and aims were introduced to parents and John Fletcher led discussion on how best we can support our boys.

This activities weekend, our Lower School play Caldicott Prep School away in the afternoon and our 1st XV take on Dean Close at home next Wednesday in the U18 NatWest Cup, before Berkhamsted in a block fixture the following Saturday.

Thank you to all pupils and parents for your support towards the start of term. A fantastic start with so many cracking fixtures to come.

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