Before I start to talk about the season, a quick notice – the club Dinner & Presentation will be at the Bunker on September 19, after the first league game. Further details will be sent out by Tony Wheeler, but be warned – if you haven’t paid in advance, there won’t be a seat for you, and no food either (and this is Brocks so there won’t be any going spare!). As ever, the Dinner will be Black Tie.

Pre-season training starts on 22 June and I would like everybody to make every effort to attend as many sessions as possible. Pre-season will be important not just for fitness work, but to develop the style of play we aim to use during the season. This will be reinforced at training throughout the season and I would like everybody to attend at least one session a week, three hours of your time isn’t a lot to ask and the effort will help make a real difference on the pitch. Your attitude to training won’t stop you being selected but it will have an impact on our decisions! If you can’t make training please let somebody at the club know.

Selection will be on Mondays and the teams will be posted on the club website on Tuesday – if you’re available and you don’t have a game call me, we can always find room for more players! We’re trying to get games for as many weekends as possible, so there are no excuses for not showing up with your kit on a Saturday!

For as many games as possible, and definitely for all league games I want everyone at the ground 90 minutes before kick-off, so we’re changed and warming up an hour before hand. Everyone will also be expected to warm up in a Brocks T-Shirt, which will be available from the Club – it might only fool the opposition but we’ll at least look like a proper team until kick-off!

Our first league game is on 19 September, we have a Kent Cup game the week before that, and we’re in the process of arranging 3 or 4 pre-season friendlies to help us be in the best shape possible to win both of those games.

Last season we suffered a lot from a lack of basic fitness and also from not having a clear idea of what we were trying to do when we managed to get hold of the ball; often giving the initiative to teams we are more than capable of competing with.

To try and avoid this happening again we’ve decided to start pre-season on 22 June. A vote on which days people would prefer to train on is currently running on the website forum; please vote if you have a preference, otherwise I will expect you to go along with the majority decision!

I know 22 June is very early and also very soon, but it does give us 12 weeks before the Kent Cup game, in which we can work on fitness and also put in place a structure for how we aim to play next season. Whether you are aiming to play for the first team next season, or only fancy a season of wondering between scrums for the threes, there is a role for you to play at training; running a “live” session against real opponents will be a massive benefit to the younger players at the club and help with the league season as well.

I have already agreed with both Kieran Oliver and Pete Fletcher that they are happy to come down and give the benefit of their expertise to the rest of us. I will also be talking to Brocks’ other respected and wise old heads to help out with other aspects of our game, so please try to make as many sessions as possible; you never know who you might bump into!