BUDE player/coach, Angus Hodges, admits his side’s pre-season preparations haven’t been great as they prepare for their final friendly at home to Hornchurch on Saturday.

The Bencoolen Meadow club travelled down to Launceston last Tuesday (August 14) to take part in a training session against Launceston’s development squad before taking just 14 players down to Wadebridge Camels for a friendly on Saturday.

However, Hodges said that their trip to Launceston was useful.

He said: “We did about 30 minutes of individual stuff and a warm up and then we came together with forwards against forwards and backs against backs and did live run throughs against each other.

“They put their development side out which was very good for us and we got lots out of it. We looked at different moves and see how we’d do against it.

“Then we came together as teams and had a mini game, which was scenario-based. We took it in turns to run through phase plays. It was really productive for us.”

Saturday was a much tougher proposition as they headed to Wadebridge Camels, who play in the league higher (Tribute Western Counties West).

With just 14 men, due to a number of factors, Bude found it tough.

However, Hodges believes it was still worthwhile.

He said:?“A lot of our players were working but we played three 20 minute thirds.

“Unfortunately we only had one front rower. The first 20 saw contested scrums, but after that we didn’t as we didn’t want anyone getting injured.

“The first 40 minutes were really good and we had a lot of positive play, which we’ve worked on.

“We saw a lot of movements and patterns which we’ve been working on in training.

“Overall I was really happy even though we were low on numbers and our mindset wasn’t quite there.

“However, alot of the boys were putting in 100% into it which was really nice. It would have been so easy not to put in much fight and effort with the lack of players we had.

“In the end we fell down a little where they scored a fair few tries but if we’d taken a full side down we’d have been more competitive.”

With Tavistock away in their first league game next Saturday, Hodges hopes they can improve against Hornchurch.

He said:?“Hopefully numbers at training this week should be better and we’ll hopefully have more players as we’re at home.

“We’re looking to get the right people in the right place as we had a fair few out of position.

“Obviously pre-season hasn’t gone quite to plan as some boys haven’t even played yet.

“But we need to make sure we make Saturday count and get as much out of it as possible ahead of the start of the new season next weekend.

“We need to make sure we get the boys who’ve not played yet to be on the same page!”