Former Scotland international Hugo Southwell is sharing his wealth of rugby knowledge with Beaconsfield by taking coaching sessions at the club.

The 34-year-old, formerly of Wasps and Stade Francais among others, leads a training session once a month at the club where his son is also learning the game in the junior ranks.

Southwell’s impressive CV includes 59 caps for his country with five of those appearances coming at the 2007 World Cup.

Beaconsfield coach Simon Tattersall feels the insight offered by the former Wasps captain will be of huge benefit to his young squad.

He said: “Hugo comes in once a month on a very casual basis. He’s from the local area and his son plays in the minis and he’s offered to come in once a month to work with the squad on a few of the basics.

“He brings a different voice to the coaching side of things and that’s been very successful. The guys have responded well to it and it’s been really good for our youngsters to hear from someone who’s been there, done it and played at international level.

“It’s very enjoyable but also important as we’ve got quite a young squad at the moment. We had three guys on Saturday who started that are 18-years-old or younger, so it’s nice for them.”

The presence of Southwell around the training pitches at Oak Lodge Meadow will not just be of benefit to the players, however, with Tattersall stating that the former full-back’s experience is also a help to the club’s coaches.

“It reaffirms the things that me and Jerry Goss as coaches have been saying through the season, that rugby is really a game about basics,” he said.

“Once you get your basics in place you can then look to expand upon those. It’s about making sure your basic skills are at a higher level as is possible and that’s certainly a great message for the younger players coming through.

“They now know that they need to do their extras after training or before training if they aspire to play at a higher level.

“If him being around the place creates that bit of buzz and energy then that can only be a good thing for the club.”

The Beaconsfield coach also reflected on what he felt was his side’s best performance of the season on Saturday – despite seeing his side go down 22-13 by Aylesbury.

He said: “I can’t fault the performance one bit, everyone from one to 18 really fronted up and put what is a really good side under a lot of pressure. They certainly knew at the end of the game that we’d pushed them as much as they were going to get pushed.

“They were unbeaten at home in 18 months and we came very, very close to ending that run. The performance was our best of the season and if we can perform like that for the rest of the season then we’ll have a really positive second half (to the season).”

Tattersall’s team have no fixture this weekend and are back in action on January 31 when they take on Thatcham as they look to improve upon their eighth place position in the Southern Counties North table.