WITH four weeks of the season gone so far, it’s been a very mixed bag of results for all of our local teams.

After their brilliant opening-day win against Harlequins at Twickenham, London Irish suffered a third consecutive Aviva Premiership defeat when they went down to Northampton Saints in their first game at Madejski Stadium this season.

They made a shocking start by conceding two tries in the opening five minutes, and while they showed some fight in the second half, they were ultimately well beaten.

It’s a short turn-around this week as well, as they travel to Newcastle Falcons tomorrow night.

Dean Richards’ side have really impressed to date, so it’s going to be a tough ask for Exiles, but fingers crossed they can put in a good performance.

It was a bad weekend for Redingensians Rams as well, as they lost their second of four National Two South games.

Despite opening the scoring through a seventh-minute Greg Illingworth try and being all-square 14-14 at the break, they finally went down heavily at a strong Chinnor side.

It certainly doesn’t get any easier for them this Saturday either, as they welcome along unbeaten league leaders Cinderford to the Old Bath Road ground.

As for my boys, Reading, well we’ve got Southern Counties North table-toppers Beaconsfield arriving at Holme Park.

It’s early days but they’ve won both their games, so we’d better be at our very best this weekend.

Reading Abbey will also need to be, as they travel to Buckingham looking to bounce back from their unfortunate home defeat at the hands of Aylesbury a fortnight ago.

Another side that needs to sharpen up is Berkshire Shire Hall, who have so far lost both their opening BB&O Championship games – conceding 87 points and scoring just 22!

On the international front, England’s November fixtures have been confirmed and for any avid supporter you couldn’t ask for a much better line-up, including as it does South Africa (Saturday 3), New Zealand (10) and Australia (28).