Top three, bottom three?

I'm astonished that some are astonished when others reply to the propaganda!

Nottingham usually start strongly and come out firing on all cylinders, but then injuries happen and we start to flounder. Last season we were in and around the top of the league until just after Christmas then I think at one stage we won precisely two matches until the end of the season, aside from an absolute demolition of Cambridge where a few sighs of relief were heaved. 

We have some really standout players- David Williams, our winger and current captain is always one to watch (although he’s spent the summer playing Hospital Cup in Oz so don’t know how long we will be without him) Harry Graham- another winger; and our centre Kegan Christian-Goss are all dangerous with ball in hand. 

In the forwards, our number 8 James Cherry is solid, reliable and well- dangerous; and I’m very much looking forward to seeing our new signing Iestyn Rees in action too. 

Areas that are worrying me are the front row- we’ve signed a few very inexperienced props; and Leicester Tigers have poached Ale Loman- although we’re very well stocked at hooker with the signing of Ben Brownlie and Arthur Allen alongside Jack Dickinson; and fly half and scrum half where we don’t have much cover. The players we do have there are more than capable- we’ve got Will Yarnell and Josh Goodwin at scrum half, both of whom are very reliable and play a solid game; and at fly half we’ve signed Evan Mitchell from Ampthill and we also have Gwyn Parks, who is a good player providing he can stay fit- which going on last season might be a bit of a challenge!!! 

Last season we managed some surprising results- we beat Doncaster both at home and away (there always seems to be some incident happening in the Doncaster matches- there’s always multiple yellow cards going on- tasty rivalry ahoy ) we came exceptionally close to beating Northampton at Franklin’s Gardens in the Cup, and we also beat Hartpury at Lady Bay quite heavily despite having won only one of the last nine matches and having been on the receiving end of some extremely heavy defeats (that trip home from Bedford after conceding 80 odd points was a tough one for sure) however we had a crippling injury list and were down to past the bare bones, with no cover in some positions (fly half, scrum half and back row were particularly weak spots for us) When we’re good and things are going our way many teams say that we are a bit of a bogey team and to watch out for us; but when things aren’t going our way they tend to fall apart rather spectacularly!!! 

I’m much looking forward to this forum when the season starts.

We did lose two of our stand out forwards, Morgan Strong (pinched byCov 😉) Archie Smeaton to a job in London (playing at Club I believe)

We look to have signed well with 3 returnees who performed well at this level for us, signed top championship backs in McNabb and Ryan Olowofella

We have also signed Josh Bainbridge who did well at Cov before going to Newcastle.  The new second row and no 8 we have signed both looks good in the videos but unproven in the championship.

We finished the season off in style by going unbeaten for the last 12 games, which for us was a club record at this level.