ABOUT US

ABOUT US


OUR HISTORY

In late 2003, the landlord and a group of friends from The Early Bird public house, Weavering, Maidstone decided to accept a challenge from the Medway Police to play a Charity rugby match in aid of the Kent Air Ambulance.

Despite the majority of the team having no rugby experience whatsoever, the game proved a great success attracting in excess of 200 supporters and, in conjunction with the post match entertainment raised £3,000.00 for the Air Ambulance Trust.

Following this success and with the support and backing of the Kent Rugby Football Union, the commitment shown from both players and our sponsors, we applied to enter the Mid Kent & East Sussex RFU Leagues in 2004. Our application was successful and after a tightly fought season we narrowly missed out on the winners spoils after a defeat at the last game decider against Aylesford, claiming the runners up position in our first year. We then proceeded to claim promotions in another 3 successive seasons, each time finishing second in our respective league.

The next few years saw a period of consolidation, many of our senior players retired, being replaced by many young new faces. In 2013/14 we won our league, Dragon Fire 4, the clubs first major silverware and in 2014/15 after appointing a new Head Coach in former England International Derek Coates towards the end of the season, we won Late Red 3 at the first attempt, overhauling Sheppey on the last day of the season. The 2015/16 season saw us playing in Premier 2, 1 league below the RFU’s main structure.

In 2019 we took over the lease of The Pavilion in Parkwood, Maidstone, our very own and first clubhouse. Since then we have gone from strength to strength under new head coach Jim Oakley and his coaching staff in the league as well as with our membership where we have 100+ members and players many from the local community.
At present we operate 3 teams, our first XV currently play competitively in Kent 2 league and our second XV that launched of the back of securing our clubhouse; the Samurais playing social fixtures and not forgetting our VETs team also playing socially (when they are not injured!).

THE FUTURE OF THE WARRIORS
2020 was due to be a huge year for the club by finally offering mini's rugby, we had everything ready and in place and the pandemic struck!
So watch this space as we hope to relaunch our mini warriors on the borough in 2021!