One Club dinner topic is the fact that the guest speaker is Big Jim Mills. Realising that the former Toppers proprietor has the perfect pedigree and experience to enforce admission rules, the President Elect offers his advance cash payment to secure a meal ticket. Please follow suit.
Another topic is Honours Ties. Despite what some people believe, there is no definitive list of recipients and the club often relies on educated guesses and self-certification. Your help would be appreciated.
The categories are as follows: 1. A hundred 1st XV games, 2. Three hundred Senior club games (including Colts), 3. Club Captain, 4. President, 5. Life-Member, 6. Six years on Management Committee, 7. Twenty seasons as a playing member (including Juniors)
This year’s tie-men include John Barrow (pictured) and Clive Winstanley who, just to prove the point, both slipped the net in previous years plus Ian Thompson who has completed his sixth season as Honorary Secretary.
The seventh category was added to tidy up an anomaly and reward dependability.
Broadly speaking, we’d like to hear from playing members who have been at the club from 1994-95 or before and haven’t already been awarded an honours tie. The mini-junior teams at the time were Ste Morris’s U7s, Neil Bliss’s U8s, Martin Griffiths’s U9s, Jimmy O’Neill’s U10s, Joe Stanners’s U11s and my U12s. As it happens, the junior records are fairly detailed if a little haphazard. Either let a committee man know or have a word with me.
Even if you don’t qualify this year, it’s worth getting your advance claim in. I’m not saying that we’re anticipating a great rush but the supply of Honours Ties isn’t inexhaustible and a few clues would assist stock control. I think that the next team up was Oliver’s Army followed by Martin Kerr’s lot.