Welwyn RFC

Vice Presidents’ Secretary’s Report

Thanks again to all VPs who have paid their subscriptions – your contributions make a very significant contribution to the running of our club. I would be delighted to receive any outstanding subs – my contact details are below.

Our President, Malcolm Tucker, has kindly volunteered to take over the administration of pre-League lunches and Heather has included details of the next two in her article below. Malcolm has also asked me to remind you that as the clocks have now changed, kick-off times will be earlier. In the good old days, Nov/Feb was 2.30 and Dec/Jan was 2.15, but these days it appears to be largely at the discretion of the referee. My advice would be to get to the game by 2.15 to avoid disappointment - you can always have a quick drink at the bar while you are waiting! If this publication reaches you before Saturday 5th November, please note that the home game against Beccles will start at 2.00 as it is a cup game with the possibility of extra time.

You will note from articles below that the 1st XV have had a disappointing start to the season but with several key injured players about to return to action, let’s hope for a decent run into Christmas. Those of us who watched the game against Stevenage on 17th September will still be wondering how that game slipped away from us in the sixth minute of injury time and Stevenage are now top of the league! We are clearly capable of beating any side on our day.

As I travel around the County, I am always extremely proud that Welwyn still manages to field five sides every Saturday and apparently we have been getting close to putting out a 6th XV on occasion. This is at a time when many of our historic local rivals are struggling to put out two or three teams. Clearly a lot of work goes into this and we should be grateful to Mick Hills and the lower side captains and team managers for making this happen. I was also delighted that our 5th XV recently hosted the first ever match for Weston RFC, who are newly affiliated to Herts RFU. Sadly Heather and I were away that day, but I have had very positive feedback from Weston on what generous hosts we had been on the day. Many thanks to Rupert Gadd for making their special day so memorable and for finding a Welwyn club plaque at the back of a cupboard and presenting it to them as a permanent memento.

I had the pleasure of watching our Colts play Luton Colts at Welwyn on Sunday, followed immediately by Hertfordshire U18 against Hampshire. Both matches were won in convincing style despite our Colts not being at full strength. The reason for this was that there were no fewer than nine Welwyn lads representing Hertfordshire in the second game, including six of the starting pack! Wonderful! It would be great to see some of these lads playing in the 1st XV before too long.

On a more sombre note, I regret to advise that longstanding member VP, Iolo Lewis passed away in September and our condolences go to his son Calvin and the rest of his family. When he retired from playing, Iolo was instrumental in coaching in the new Mini Junior section of the club and coached the Colts for a number of seasons. Calvin presented the club with a signed Barbarians shirt in memory of his father and this is now framed and on display in the clubhouse.

Finally, I make no apologies that this edition is dominated by articles about our very successful girls’ section – I can only include what I am given. We have had several interesting and amusing articles from VPs in the past, so if you would like to contribute, I would be delighted to hear from you.

See you at the President’s Lunch at the club on Saturday 12th November.


Mark Elliott
Vice Presidents’ Secretary
1 Elmwood
Welwyn Garden City
Hertfordshire
AL8 6LD
mark.elliott@elliottpm.com
07836 728804




Chairman’s Chatter

A disappointing start to the season for the 1st XV, who are currently bottom of London NW 2 having drawn one game and lost six. On a brighter note, the club is regularly putting out five sides and many of the lower sides are enjoying success. This week the 1st XV play Beccles at home in the Intermediate Cup and it is hoped that a victory then will kick start their league season the following week. We have a few key players out injured but are hopeful that they will soon be back to fitness and results will start going our way.

As some of you may be aware, Karen Afford, the Club Secretary, has resigned and I am currently filling in on what I hope is a very temporary basis! A plea to anyone who would be interested in taking on the role of Hon Secretary of the club to contact me as, apart from anything, it is not a good idea for two of the main administrative roles to be covered by one person. My thanks to Karen for the hard work that she put in during her term as Hon Secretary and for the carefully organised files that she has handed over. For anyone considering taking on the role, a system was set up by Malcolm Tucker and has been continued by Karen, that is easy to navigate and administer but just needs someone with a bit of spare time to ensure that various licences, etc, are renewed on time and that any correspondence is either forwarded to the correct person in the club or answered on the club’s behalf.

Lawrance Wiles works very hard at ensuring that the gym runs smoothly. Due to personal circumstances Lawrance is struggling to deal with both the maintenance of the equipment and the administrative side of the gym. The latter involves checking the bank statements once a month to ensure that all the standing orders are being paid and then chasing up any that aren’t to ascertain whether the person still wants to be a member or not. If anyone is willing to give up some of their time to take over the administrative side of the gym, then please let me know.

The next pre match lunch is on 12th November when we play Fullerians. This is also the President’s Lunch when Malcolm Tucker has very kindly offered to buy wine for the tables. If you would like to attend this lunch, please let either Malcolm Tucker (Malcolm.tucker@btinternet.com) or myself (heather.elliott@btinternet.com) know by Tuesday 8th November 2011 so that you can be booked in. This is the last pre match lunch this year, with lunches resuming on 7th January 2012 when we play Grasshoppers at home.

With the World Cup matches being shown on ITV rather than Sky, we didn’t have huge crowds down at the club to watch the weekend games throughout the tournament but those that did turn up enjoyed watching the games on the new flat screen TVs, which have been much admired. Many thanks to Brian Thomas for raising the money for one of these TVs, to Kevin Smith for negotiating sponsorship for the other and to Gary Peterkin and Rod Faircloth for ensuring that they are up on the wall and wired up.

Thanks to Rod Faircloth also for the myriad of maintenance jobs that he has been called in to do at the club over the past couple of months (often at very short notice!), from leaking urinals to replacing the work surfaces in the bar area.

On a personal note, congratulations and thank you to Peter and Helen for producing Isla Madeleine on 1st October 2011 and making Shabby and me very proud grandparents! And last but by no means least, our daughter Rachel arrived back from two years travelling in Australia in August and she has been hauled straight back into the kitchen at the rugby club – welcome back, Rach!

Heather Elliott
Chairman
heather.elliott@btinternet.com
07870 414975

New Website

Just a reminder that by simply visiting the site at www.welwynrugby.co.uk and registering your e-mail address you can be automatically informed on club news and events, weekly match reports, comment on club forums and even post your own photos and contributions -simply click member sign up and follow the instructions to become part of the Welwyn RFC web community!!


Girls’ Section
I hope you can read the article below which has been taken straight from the RFU’s monthly Touchline magazine which is distributed to all clubs nationally. Thanks go to the RFU for their permission to reproduce it here. Many of you will be aware of the outstanding efforts of Welwyn RFC teenagers Oren Blindell and Rachel McCullough in raising the profile of rugby within Hertfordshire and we should all be extremely proud that this has been recognised by the presentation of a prestigious Diana Award.

Welwyn become National Champions

On May 14th, on their last competitive event of the season, the Welwyn Saints U18 women’s team crowned their season by winning the National 7s competition at Lichfield RFC.

On a sunny but blustery day the squad of 12 girls started slowly in their first round of group matches beating Exeter Saracens and just squeaking past Lichfield who we had beaten twice in the league in tight encounters.

In the Cup play-off matches they faced a very strong group with London Irish, Paviours and Worcester – probably the four best teams in the country, head to head. Irish had been unbeaten all season and had turned us over in Worthing the previous weekend so it was a stunning performance to totally dominate them and give then some bitter medicine with a 24-0 win.

Next came Paviours, the only team to beat us in the league; the 17-0 win for us was therefore particularly sweet. That gave us a show down against Worcester who had also not lost a game in the tournament. A much tighter affair going right to the wire but when the final whistle went the 17-5 score line meant just one thing – a National Champion team at Welwyn RFC.


For the coming season the U18s have a challenging league ahead of them. At our request, the RFUW have put the strongest, most developed U18 teams together in the same league. So this year we have home and away fixtures against London Irish, Paviours, Lichfield, Worcester, Berkshire Baa Baas and Oxford Barbarians.

I am sure you will join me in wishing the girls all the very best for the challenging season ahead and that you will give them all the support that they need.

We should be rightly proud of both our U15 (unbeaten league champions last year) and the U18 girls.

On top of all this, Geogia Peedle who was part of our 7s winning squad joined 3 other Herts girls in the stunning England U20 team that won the Nations Cup in California this summer.


Both the U18s and U15s have started strongly again this season, both being unbeaten -PLEASE view the leagur tables on the full version of WELWYNFORMED in our documents section.


Wrinklies’ Gag of the Month
An older couple were lying in bed one night. The husband was falling asleep, but his wife was in romantic mood and wanted to talk.
She said: “you used to hold my hand when we were courting”.
Wearily he reached across, held her hand for a second and tried to get back to sleep.
A few moments later she said: “then you used to kiss me”
Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek and settled down to sleep.
Thirty seconds later she said “then you used to bite my neck”.
Angrily, he threw back the bed clothes and got out of bed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To get my teeth!” he replied.