I hope you’ve all enjoyed the break, although those that took part in Warren’s mixed age group sessions on a Tuesday and the U13s have been back at it for a while now.

I’ll try and keep this as short as possible but it promises to be a busy start to the season so in chronological order here goes.......

Friday 4th September is the start of the Camp Hill Mini & Junior 21st Anniversary celebrations where anyone who’s had a connection with the M&Js is invited to a scoop or five at the club – players, parents, coaches, admins, caterers, shop keepers. A M&J section was ground breaking at the time – oh how that’s changed, but it would be great to see as many as possible rock up and enjoy the achievement we’ve all contributed to.

First ‘official’ training session is Sunday 6th September – usual 10.30 start.

Saturday 12th September – for the last year or so we’ve been working with Old Ys, Sils and Edwardians to do something in respect of the forthcoming World Cup. We’ve kindly been granted Solihull’s Mell Square for the day to promote rugby. We’re calling it Solihull in Union and we’ve got The RFU, Wasps and Worcester coming across for the day. Wasps have been particularly supportive and are bringing their Interactive Zone so we can all make muppets of ourselves. There’s a couple of Wasps players and coaches rocking up at various stages including Serge Betsen and Paul Sakey. If Betsen doesn’t frighten the kids no one will! BBC and ITV may be covering it so it would be fantastic and really appreciated if at some point you could spare a few minutes to walk past and throw stuff at the other 3 clubs – collaboration only goes so far and we want to be the best on the day!

Friday 18th September – England kick off the World Cup. The club promises to be buzzing and your more than welcome to join in for this game or any of the other RWC games.

Saturday 19th September – Birmingham are hosting a couple of games at Villa Park (I appreciate they’d go much better at St Andrews but hey-ho, just a poor choice and no accounting for taste!) and as part of it there will be a Fanzone at Millenium Point. It runs for several days but Saturday 19th is given over to M&Js and we’ve been asked to put on a training session between 1.00 and 2.00. This is a reflection of the work that the club has done with the Birmingham Rugby Partnership and as space is limited I decided that the U8s and U12s should be our representatives on the day with all other age groups to support if possible. Apologies to the other age groups but space is limited and I elected these based on their stellar performance on tour last year.

Sunday 20th – I’m going on holiday! You don’t need to know this, but I’m really looking forward to it!

Admin

Deb Coles has worked really hard during the summer to set up Pay Subs Online. It’s a bit like Parent Pay for clubs so we can use it for collecting subs, promoting events, collecting tour money and not least a centralised database for communicating stuff that isn’t necessarily age group related. I hope we’ll all support it because Debs has really dogged it out to get it ready and I’m sure it’ll be a real leap forward for us in terms of organisation and communications.

Events – Halloween, Bonfire, Xmas and so forth as per usual, plus a few more 21st anniversary celebrations, rugby world cup related events and last but not least the now legendary Camp Hill M&J Tour. More info to follow, but suffice we’ve got a great Events Committee this year so should be fun!

We’ve got new match day kits courtesy of Danny Ingram and his company’s (Quilter Cheviot) kind sponsorship.

My aspirations for the coming year are simply to push forward with recruitment, retain the players by giving everyone a fair crack of the whip and continually working to improve coaching and facilities and do it from a sound financial footing. As we speak we’re planning a revamp of the clubhouse and the water system. I appreciate the latter doesn’t sound exciting but it’s massively overdue and the costs are staggering for a little rugby club, ergo all sponsorships gratefully received. I’m not sure what we can offer in exchange other than a friendly face for community based rugby and a big thank you, but it’s been forever thus for Camp Hill and we’re still in there after 21 years so we must be doing something right. Looking forward to the next 21.

Best Rgd's

Nigel (M&J Chairman)

T. +44 (0)1386 257757

M. 07751 023736