I HOPE that, where possible, your senior players all had a relaxed time last Saturday and gave those lumps and bumps picked up in the opening couple of months of the season time to recover.

At least you had a cracking international to watch and what a win it was for England, seeing off Australia 30-6 at Twickenham.

We really had to work hard in the first half. It did not look like it was going to happen for us.

England were certainly not at their slickest and you would have to say that a 6-0 half time lead would, normally, not have been enough.

Thankfully, we upped our game and, in those terrible conditions, played some really good rugby.

Joe Launchbury was phenomenal while, among the Australian side, Courtney Beale was at the heart of everything, including picking up a yellow card. In fact the two yellow cards in the first half for Australia took their toll later in the game.

England’s late rattle of tries won the day, however, and a lot of that was down to the arrival of scrum-half Danny Care. He brought an injection of pace and alertness and ripped apart a good and resilient Wallaby defence.

Anyway, the autumn internationals conclude for England this Saturday against Samoa (3pm), with England Women in action against Canada directly afterwards (5.40pm).

Elsewhere, it was great to see London Irish put up such a strong fight against Bath on Sunday. They lost the match narrowly but will surely pick up some victories soon if they keep playing like that and with that intensity.

So it’s back to league action this Saturday for all our local clubs with Redingensians Rams heading for Somerset for what promises to be a cracker against Taunton Titans.

Titans sit third in the NL2 South table, just four points clear of Rams, and smarting from two successive defeats to London Irish Wild Geese and Henley Hawks.

As for my boys, Reading, we host Buckingham in Southern Counties South which is certainly going to be a mighty hard game.

The visitors currently lead the table and are unbeaten in eight of their opening outings.

Thankfully, we should have all our players back and available and, I am sure, they will trot out with only one thing on their mind and that will be to win as they know they have the strength to do it.

No comforts of home for Reading Abbey who travel to Stow-on-the-Wold this weekend.

Abbey should be in a confident frame of mind following their most recent performance when they were so unlucky to lose out at home to unbeaten-in-eight league leaders Beaconsfield by a solitary point.