I MUST start off by congratulating London Irish on becoming the first team to win at Coventry for more than a year, their 21-17 triumph a fourth Greene King IPA Championship victory from four games.

Exiles were given a stern examination at a partisan Butts Park Arena where the home side led 10-7 at the break, but they held their nerve and let’s hope they can maintain their form this Sunday with a trip to sixth-placed London Scottish.

Rams bounced back to winning ways with a brilliant 47-21 win at home to Bury St. Edmunds which moves them top of National Two South on points difference from Taunton Titans.

They should really be able to consolidate their efforts this Saturday as they travel to 12th-placed Barnes, who have won just one of their opening five games.

As far as I was concerned last Saturday's match of the day was this year's first derby between Reading Abbey and my boys Reading.

Both sides had players missing, Abbey due to a wedding (it would not have happened in my day) and Reading due to illness in the morning, and before kick-off there was a minute’s silence due to the sad losses of Trevor Bainbridge at Abbey and Jerry Rubin of Reading who both passed away last week.

They were two well-known characters and this just added to the emotion and passion of the players on the day.

Reading put in a good first-half performance and the pack did a good job to inspire us to a useful 10-5 lead at half time, but Abbey never gave up.

They came back and scored some good tries through their off-loading and support play, but with eight minutes to go we scored a fine try against the flow of play when we went over to make it 22-18.

All we needed to do was control the game, but Abbey came back with everything they had and scored a try in the last minute of the game to seal the win, 23-22.

I must mention our new scrum-half, Guillaume Janvin, who put in a good performance on his debut and, I think, he will do a good job for us.

This was a typical derby game with too many basic errors on both sides, but you can’t say it wasn’t exciting to watch.

Lets hope we can bounce back at home to Slough, while Abbey will hope to continue their momentum in a tough game with Berkshire rivals Windsor.

Lastly, commiserations to Berkshire Shire Hall, who suffered their second straight reverse with a 43-12 defeat by visitors Aldermaston.

Hopefully they can use their week off to sort things out.