THE Christmas and new year’s festivities are all over for another year and it’s time to get back to the everyday nitty-gritty of running our clubs and nurturing our sides through the second half of the season.

It’s the sharp end, as they say, and a time when a successful club’s promotion prospects can be achieved or dashed, while for some the stark realisation dawns they will be kicking-off the following season in a lower league.

It’s never easy to swallow that, but it’s what leagues are all about and, let’s face it, who would want to go back to the pre-1987 days when all we played were friendly matches every Saturday.

One club in relegation trouble are London Irish, who lost for an 11th straight Aviva Premiership game, edged out by Newcastle Falcons on Saturday.

Nick Kennedy’s men keep getting close at home, but they’ll have to produce full 80-minute efforts to haul themselves off the foot of the table where they are 10 points behind Worcester.

They will try to start their survival bid this Saturday, but they face a tough old trip to one of English rugby’s powerhouses, Leicester Tigers.

Things are going much better for Redingensians in National Two South, and following a four-match winning run, they’ve climbed to third ahead of a home game with Worthing on Saturday.

They’re 13 points off leaders Chinnor, and they welcome to the Oxfordshire side to the Old Bath Road ground the following week in what could be a season-defining clash.

As for the other Reading clubs, they have to hang on one more week until January 13 before they get back into league action. Abbey are away at Aylesbury in Southern Counties North, while my boys Reading have third-placed Windsor at home, to whom we lost narrowly 15-10 back in September at their ground.

This time we will be looking to get more than a losing bonus point and our team spirit is really good after two back-to-back wins, although I must admit with such a long break all of these sides may be not as fit as they were prior to Christmas, so the teams who put in the extra training effort and fitness should come out on top.