IT is a true pleasure to have Esher back at OBR for tonight’s National One game – they’re a great club, very hospitable, and with some superb characters.

John (Inverdale) has a great knowledge of sport and has done a fantastic job representing National League Rugby, while their DoR Peter Winterbottom is a legend – whether Timmy Bell will want to speak to him I don’t know as he took the Harlequins No. 7 shirt from him!

On the playing side, in Sam Morley and Ed Volley they’ve got two of the most exciting backs in the league, they’ve been getting some traction in recent weeks, want to stay up, are scrapping hard and it will be another game which proves how difficult National One is.

It will be tough, and it is tiny margins in this league. Towards the end of our game at Rosslyn Park we were winning by two points, Richmond were losing at home to Rotherham, and five minutes later, we’ve conceded a penalty to lose and Richmond have scored a try to win – rather than being joint top we’ve slipped further behind.

It shows how narrow things are, but there’ll be more twists and turns in the second half of the season, which makes for a fascinating spectacle to watch.

There has been much in the media in recent weeks about a grassroots rebellion to remove RFU Chief Executive Bill Sweeney and Chairman Tom Ilube, but personally my big worry is the Council dodges the bullet again, managing to push the blame onto the Executive.

The Council structure, not the people, is the root cause of most of the sport’s ills in this country. English rugby is not down and out – there’s lot of great things happening in it – but we tend to focus on the bad things which I think is a modern phenomenon with algorithms, modern communications and social media picking out bad news.

A game which became professional, where the national team rakes in well over £100m a year, is widely run by a committee of 60 people who are fundamentally amateurs and aside from their own areas of interest, most of them haven’t got a clue how to run an operation like that.

I believe it’s time for everybody in English rugby to get together and work out a better governing structure rather than us all being represented by a 60-plus committee which doesn’t work.

I’d like to thank IBS Office Solutions for sponsoring tonight’s game. Caleb and Jo Southwell are great supporters who come to home and away games regularly, and we’re very lucky to have people like them behind us.

Caleb especially has a great passion for seeing rugby played the right way, and he coached a top youth team at Henley which had a big pack, but who could all play.

In terms of sponsorship, we’re in a fantastic area in the Thames Valley with lots of businesses, many of whom already support the club – but there are opportunities for more to get involved.

They’d be helping their own community, but also putting themselves out there to make it clear you’re out there and open for business. Whether that’s taking a board, becoming a match sponsor or even a main one, there’s lots of opportunities and (sponsorship manager) Hannah (Lynch) is doing a great job – I’m sure she’ll be knocking on lots more doors!

Despite the result against Richmond, I was hugely proud of what’s been achieved since I joined the club in 1991.

Back then you were lucky if you had a couple of people watching on the sidelines – one of them would have been the physio with the bucket and sponge – so to have more than 1,800 people in the crowd was brilliant.

The quality of rugby the boys are producing compared to the 90s is phenomenal.

They’re a very dedicated squad and I admire them immensely – they’re all very disappointed we haven’t done a bit better in the past three games, but I know they’ll try and put it right.

In life it’s not so much how you respond when you win, it’s what you do when you lose. When you get knocked down the only crime is not getting up, and I expect the boys to get up and hit the second half of the season with a flurry.

That’s not to say we expect to beat Esher, or Sale away, or any other game coming up, but if you keep going out there and fighting, working hard for each other, great things can happen.

Finally, the support has been fantastic this year. At home it’s wonderful, the noise has been sensational, but we also get great travelling backing – I’d say we’re one of the best away supported teams in the league although Birmingham Moseley might contest that.

Our home support has been like a 16th man and while we didn’t get a chance to get them in the game against Richmond – every time it felt like they wanted to we lost a bit of momentum – but hopefully we can make it work on both sides of the ball this week.

Enjoy the game and have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!