Pre-season will stand Park in good stead, says Power
DESPITE coming up short against Richmond after a last-minute drop goal by Lewis Dennett, Rosslyn Park’s director of rugby Kieran Power believes there’s plenty more in the tank for the campaign ahead.
With over 800 in attendance for the showdown between two of the capital’s oldest rugby clubs, Richmond took the bragging rights 21-19.
But Power, who has been with Rosslyn Park for nine seasons after 12 years with Ealing Trail-finders, remains upbeat.
He told The Rugby Paper: “To have your opening game of the season at home against your biggest local rivals was very exciting and a great way to kick off our season and say we are back into rugby.
“We came into the game with a few niggles off the back of a tough pre-season, we took a couple of knocks at the weekend. Hopefully we will have a strong bill of health for the pack and the majority of the backs, so we will be as strong as we can for the forthcoming games.”
Power says the competition between these two clubs and the tempo both Rosslyn Park and Richmond bring against one another is very well established in the rugby hierarchy due to these two sides meeting for over half a century.
He said: “We normally have been able to turn the screw on Richmond in the derbies, however the tide has turned their way. I feel we were better than the game we played at Rotherham, but there are facets of the game we were not completely happy with.
“We are still catching up with our rugby, we spent a lot of pre-season working on conditioning and with a few new players in pivotal positions the team is still learning from each other. We gave a decent account of ourselves against Richmond and know there is a lot more to come.”
Power’s side have come up short in the promotion race in recent seasons and he is not looking too far ahead. He added: “The group is working together to gain a consistent performance and get lift off from there. There is a lot of rugby ahead of us and we want to get the first performance we’re all really happy with.”
Power, who moved into coaching aged 28, stands by Rosslyn Park’s many core principles and has been heavily involved in the community programme which is now entering it’s third year.
He said: “We are lucky that Wandsworth has been somewhat untouched by rugby and our outreach is quite big now. We are now marked as one of Wandsworth’s premier grant rewarded community schemes which is all going strength to strength.”
