I think of my best mate Tom Maynard and just get on with it, says London Welsh stalwart Ed Jackson Jackson was a promising cricketer too - "an opening batsman/slogger," he admits, "a Twenty20 opener definitely"- but his last match alongside Maynard was the Lord's Taverners Under-15 final at Trent Bridge in 2004 when Millfield defeated RGS Worcester, with Jackson making 58 and Maynard 30. Thereafter Jackson concentrated on his rugby, winning England age-group caps at Under-16 and Under-18, while Maynard confidently trod the path that took him to the England Lions side last winter, and, surely, a full England cap at some juncture beyond. A few weeks before his death Maynard had travelled to Welsh's now-fully-adopted home at the Kassam Stadium, in Oxford, to watch Jackson in his side's 29-20 victory over Cornish Pirates that clinched the Championship title and began their protracted wait for Aviva Premiership status. "I'm happy he came that day because he wasn't sure if he could make it," Jackson says. He was pretty good at coming to the games when he could and I used to go and watch him when I could. At Maynard's funeral at Llandaff Cathedral on July 4 Jackson was a pallbearer alongside others, including the then Surrey captain Rory Hamilton-Brown and the England fast bowler Jade Dernbach. Afterwards at the Thornhill Crematorium, Jackson spoke with a wonderful mixture of emotion and humour. "It's weird," he says, "because if someone had told me it was going to happen I would have just said I'd be in bits and no way could I speak. But when it happened I knew Tom would have wanted me to do it for him and make it easier for everyone else. Jackson keeps in regular contact with Tom's parents, Matthew and Sue, and his sister Ceri, all of whom are now in South Africa where Matthew, the former England batsman, is coaching Nashua Titans. "I'm just trying to help them as much as I can at this terrible time," he says. Tom is never far from his thoughts and, considering the little time that has passed since his death, he speaks eloquently about him. Inevitably, though, words fail Jackson on occasion. "I keep going to ring him and then...," he trails off. But I also think about him in terms of my rugby. I sometimes ask "Do I really want to be doing this extra session?" or "Do I want to be sticking my head there?" I know what Tom would have done, and I know what Tom would have wanted me to do. So I just get on with it. And Jackson has been getting on with it rather well. A powerful ball-carrying No 8, his career began at Bath where shoulder injuries deprived him of a year's rugby before he moved to Doncaster and then on to Welsh in the summer of 2011. He scored the decisive try in the 25-24 win over Exeter, and pounced again in the 29-19 victory over Sale. He describes them as "flop-overs," but then that is just his innate modesty talking. Give him a challenge, and his steely side emerges. Like his colleagues he has rather enjoyed proving against all expectation that Welsh deserve their place in the Premiership, emphasising their collective confidence ahead of this afternoon's home game against Gloucester when he says: "We will be disappointed with anything other than a win." When the season is over Jackson plans an even greater challenge. For the Tom Maynard Trust, which has been set up to help young disadvantaged sportspeople, he will take on a 10-day trek in the jungles of Borneo. "We wanted to do something very hard, so I looked on a website for such things and it said this was one of the toughest," Jackson says. In Tom's memory nothing will be too tough. To sponsor Ed's Borneo trek for the Tom Maynard Trust go to www.justgiving.com/maynard55