Among those who were present were new faces such as Gavin Duffy, Ben Willis, Simon Keogh and Andy Dunne, while George Harder and Josh Taumalolo will be with us on 15th July. Also this week we have seen several new faces in the academy that you will get to see during the season, performing for the Under 21's and the 2nd XV, and possibly the 1st XV - who knows.

As I have said before, a lot of time and effort has gone into preparing the training programme for the 11 weeks leading up to our first Zurich Premiership game at home to London Wasps on Saturday 13th September.

The fitness and medical teams are spending a lot of time with the players, putting them through various injury prevention exercises as well as full recovery programmes. The Coaching team have put together a thorough skills programme, as well as adapting the game of tag rugby to further enhance these skills to meet our needs in the 15-a-side game.

You may well be aware that our pre-season fixtures have now been finalised and they are as follows:

Wednesday 13th August, Vs Beziers (Away)
Tuesday 19th August, Vs Castres (Away, Millau)
Monday 25th August, Vs Gwent Dragons (Away, Rodney Parade, Kick-Off 2.30pm)
Friday 29th August, Vs London Welsh (Home, the Stoop, Kick-Off 8.00pm)
Friday 5th September, Vs Saracens (Home, the Stoop, Kick-Off 7.45pm)

These matches should ensure that by the time we reach the start of the Zurich Premiership season, we should be well prepared in terms of the teams and individuals performance.

Having been away last week it would be remiss of me not to give ablated congratulations to the England squad, who followed up their win over New Zealand by defeating Australia in their own country for the first time. This was a fantastic achievement for the squad to end their season on and a great springboard for them to build on, starting on 21st July as they get together to begin their preparations for the Rugby World Cup.

Back here in England, the England Under 21 team performed disappointingly in their Rugby World Cup. However, it was a tremendous reflection on the NEC Harlequins academy that by the end of the tournament we had no less then five players in the squad with both Tom Williams and Andy Reay joining Chris Bell, Ugo Monye and Henry Barratt in the squad. It does bode well for the future at Quins.

Today the players have undertaken the first part of the skills programme with Paul Turner and Mark Evans, and tomorrow they will be starting the tag rugby. There is a long way to go before 13th September but the first weeks training is nearly complete.