Having joined the Mowden Par coaching team over the summer, Forwards Coach Mark Luffman has spent the last few weeks touring South Africa with England U18s. We caught up with Mark to get his thoughts on the tour so far as well as the domestic season to come.
After a win over France and a narrow defeat to Wales, Luffman was happy with the boys progress to date: “The tour so far has been brilliant. It is a development-focussed tour aimed at giving the lads the experience of an overseas' rugby tour; developing themselves and seeing different cultures. The lads have been great, trained really hard and hopefully taken a lot from it.

The tour is not results focussed but so far we have beaten France 24-8 and narrowly lost to Wales 14-12 we have our last game against South Africa this afternoon.”

The DMP coach comes into the tour with previous experience of age group rugby with England as well as with Yorkshire Carnegie and Otley. Asked about the tour’s impact on his own development, Luffman said: “Personally it has been a great experience working with great coaches and support staff and really talented players.”

Looking ahead to this afternoon’s final tour match, Luffman was fully aware of the task ahead; facing South Africa on home soil: “Playing SA in SA is one of the great challenges in world rugby at any level of rugby and it is one of the key parts of the tour. SA have big powerful forwards and quick skilful backs so we are well matched teams. The weather forecast is good so it should be a great game.”

Speaking on events closer to home, Luffman was happy with DMP’s pre-season progress so far: “I'm disappointed to missing the Heriot’s game today, but I’ve been in touch with Danny, Garry and John and I’ll be able to watch the game when we get back.

I think the lads are buzzing to get into the season having worked really hard in training over the last six weeks. Obviously the next two weeks are about "road testing" some of the things we have been looking at and fine tuning for the Loughborough game, as well as getting some miles into the legs before the season gets underway."

England’s final tour game against South Africa in City Park, Athlone will kick off at 1pm GMT.