Penrith rugby club have announced their senior head coach for the
coming season will be David Preston. David is a Penrith lad who has a long association with the club, he made his first senior appearance in the 1995/6 season and worked his way up through the third and second teams before breaking into the first team in the 1999/2000 when he played an integral part of Penrith winning their first County Cup since the 1960s playing in the side that beat Workington in the final.
He then had a spell of five seasons playing for Kendal before returning to the club and his current playing record stands at 159 first team games played with 20 tries to his name. Three seasons ago work commitments meant he would be unable to train on a regular basis so he moved to Aspatria where he would be guaranteed first team rugby. He now returns to his home club to pick up the reins and hopefully steer the club back to level five.
Although David has no history as an out and out coach he points out he has served under some of the best coaches in the north of England with Peter Kremer and Neil Rollins at Kendal, Stuart Connell at Penrith and Mike Scott and "Tank" Richardson at Aspatria. He has also done a bit of coaching himself at Aspatria and when at Penrith helped coach the U16s to the county cup and a number of those youngsters are now in the first team set up.
Dave sees his role as motivating the players, getting them to play to
their strengths, getting back to basics, getting them fit and doing the
simple things right. He says "The number of Cumbrian clubs in next
year's league set up is unheard of, (Carlisle, Kendal, Wigton & Kirkby Lonsdale), there will be numerous derbies which will be great for the players but it will make for a very very difficult season as they all will be looking to get one over on us. If we win the Cumbrian mini
league we will not be a million miles from where we need to be."
Director of rugby Nigel Beaty is busy setting up a team of ex players
who are all keen to muck in and help David and importantly Ryan Johnson has committed himself to a second season as first team captain when hopefully he will not be dogged by injury.
Also on a positive note ex-captain and No8 Mike Raine took exception to being described as ex-player and is reckoning to train preseason and then play next season!