Following a surprise invitation from the England RFU (David Reed), Novos were given a fantastic opportunity to play a match against Egremont of Cumbria on Friday 14th Aug as a precursor to The Captian's Run. (Full England training session before the warm up game against France)

The trip started on Thurs where the lads boarded a luxurious coach down to London where we arrived at a four star hotel. It was early to bed after being fed and watered.

Friday started early with breakfast at 6.45am. Camera crew arrived at 7.30am to film our journey to Twickers. On arrival, we were shown to the Home Team Changing Room as the lads were changing, a surprise visitor arrived in the shape of Stuart Lancaster , the current England Head Coach. Stuart presented the players with a named England Match shirt.

Whilst the lads were huddled for their pre-match chat, England's Forward Coach, Graham Rowntree, entered and joined the huddle for some final words of wisdom.

Both teams entered the tunnel and were led onto the pitch for their match. Novos kicked off for what was to be a very competitive game against our friends from Cumbria. Unfortunately, Novos went down fighting but lost two tries to one to a very organised Egremont side. The Novos try was scored by our County player, Joe Smart, after good interplay between backs and forwards which resulted in Joe going over in the corner. Novos were beginning to come back into the game after the normal slow start but were unfortunately beaten by the final whistle as the game was a 30min curtain raiser for the full England training session. Both teams shook hands and were applauded off by spectators in the stands.

The lads got changed into their Novos shirt and tie before being invited to join 500 selected guests for the England Captain's Team run. Whilst watching the players and coaches were interviewed by the Camelot film crew.

The lads had a great time and a credit to the Club and this will last long in the memory and push them to bigger and better things in the future.

A big thank you from Dave Reed, RFU Development Manager and Camelot for making this possible.

PS Tuffy, Marty and Doug enjoyed their 15min chat with Stuart Lancaster whilst waiting for the lads to come out of the tunnel.