Winchester’s senior men’s squad have played five pre-season friendly matches during August, featuring no fewer than 70 players.

They started with a three-hour coach journey to Gillingham in Kent to play Anchorians RFC, which is captained by Winchester skipper Matt Golding’s brother Tom, where they won 41-17, with the 21 Winchester players and a group of travelling supporters enjoying Anchorians’ generous hospitality after the match. Winchester’s win meant that they retained the cup in honour of Mark Humphries, who had played for both clubs and passed away three years ago.

The following Saturday Winchester’s first and second teams were due to play home matches against two teams from London Scottish, but the visitors were short of players, and at short notice Andover stepped in as the opposition for the second team. The first team won 57-12 and the seconds 40-22.

Winchester’s coaching team gave the players the bank holiday weekend off, and last Saturday Winchester’s second and third teams travelled to Basingstoke, where the 2s, for whom, to Winchester supporters’ delight, coach Gaz Martin came on as a substitute, beat Basingstoke’s first team 56-14 and the 3s were unlucky to lose to Basingstoke 2s 40-38.

For the coming season, Winchester has registered 107 players, about 40 of whom are new signings.

When asked to comment on how the pre-season preparations had gone, Martin said: “Off the field I think it’s a huge credit to the club’s leadership group that we’ve registered over 100 players for the season. On the field we owe a huge thanks to the Army Training Regiment in Andover Road. The strength and conditioning fitness training and team-building our players do in their gym is vital to everything we do, and we’re all very excited about the 24/25 season.”

Winchester’s first league match of the season is away against Wimborne on Saturday 7th September.