So much to get through in #8 of ‘Saints Way’. First up we have St Austell RFC stalwart Al Cummins. An ex-player, coach and waterboy, he now supports the club in many other ways including raising the noise levels from the stands at home games to making sure we are coordinated in getting to away matches. After Al we have words from Steve Murley then Kyle and Miles as players prepare to put studs into Tregorrick Park for the start of pre-season training. Next I have some exciting news from Stuart ‘Widge’ Widger and I will also announce the cost of this years non-playing memberships and anything else I can think of…

It’s a packed episode so let’s crack on!

Hi to the Saint’s Family: Ian Grantham has invited me to participate in the next Issue of The Club Blog. I think he be scraping the Bottom of the Barrel. I don’t even know what a Blog is!

Tell us a bit about yourself?
I am a 69-year-old passionate Welshman from Llanelli, married to Sue, my wife Sue of 49 years, two children (one of each), a dog called Molly and I drive a Skoda. Having served in the Royal Air Force & MOD Fire Service for 43 years and now I am retired.

How did you get involved at St Austell RFC?
I ended up at RAF St Mawgan near Newquay. Shortly after moving into our Cottage in St Austell (you weren’t forced to live at the base), I spied an apparition of a Postman coming up our garden path looking rather cold and wet. (this turned out to be Jack the Post). I greeted him with ‘good morning Posty, would you like a cup of Tea?’. He was taken aback by the hospitality of this strange person offering him a hot refreshment!. Well as the day’s past and numerous cups of Tea later, he noticed some Rugby Memorabilia on my walls and asked if I was interested in Rugby? He said that I should come up to the Rugby Club, they would make you most welcome. I took him up on the offer and the rest is history.

What did joining the club mean for you?
I have made some very good Friends within the Family of the St Austell Rugby Club over the past 23 years. I have held numerous posts within the Club: - Vice Chairman, Assistance Coach to Terry Prior (RIP), I was ‘Al The Sponge & Bucket’, I’ve done taping & strapping, been a Rub A Dub Man and a Blood Capsule Man for those who remember the Saga of
Dean Richards.

What do you make of the club today?
I have seen the club go up the leagues and all the way back into Cornwall One. With the Knowledge and dedication of some very inspiring and special people and a lot of hard work, the Club has come back up through the leagues, been in three Cornwall cup cinals, winning one of them. The boys are playing some very good and entertaining Rugby home and away, it’s a pleasure to watch. It’s a shame that this Covid 19 happened during the time, we could have achieved the Double in winning the league and Cornwall Cup.

What’s lockdown been like?
As a retired person this lockdown has not really affected me & my Wife, we manage to walk our dog every day, keeping our distance and staying safe. I have been making phone calls to some of the older members of the club to check on their welfare. I have been contacted myself on numerous occasions by members of the club to see if all was well. With these strange times hopefully coming to an end, I will be looking forward to meeting up with you all some time in the future for some banter, laughs, beers and some good rugby.
Al Cummins CEO Daffodil Tours

Al's Daffodil Tours is the initiative to get supporters travelling to away games. We always announce on our social media if there is a 'push' to an away game and we would love to see more people joining us for what genuinely are fun days out, often involving a train trip and refreshments in great company.

As I stated in Blog#7 things are moving fast in the world of grass roots rugby in terms of us getting back to business. This just in from Director of Rugby Steve Murley who is capturing and making sense of the dearth of guidance, constraints and advice that is becoming available by the day…over to you Steve:

Hello! There are two key things around COVID this week.

Firstly our Senior and Colt sides return to socially distanced training on Thursday July 2nd. We have put a lot of thought into how to do this safely and have implemented the following (and you’ll get more detail in Kyle and Mile’s contribution to follow this) :

Risk assessments before training
An app to confirm training attendances and record attendees
Staggered training times for backs and forwards
Players aware of their obligations before arriving at training
First aid requirements handled to keep everyone safe
It will be a “new normal” but we are sure we can make it work and stay safe

We are training, of course, to prepare for the new season and the RFU issued guidance on Friday 26th June on the return to rugby for the community game. I have summarised key points below:

Competitive Adult and Age Grade Rugby only begin on reaching “Return to Rugby” Phase F (we are currently in Phase B)
Age Grade rugby activity must continue in line with Regulation 15
Season may be extended to the end of May.
Three league models proposed based on different potential start dates which are September, November and January.
In all three models, league splits into 2 x 7 team conferences from start of season. These will be geographically based , each conference plays home and away games giving each team 12 matches.
Advantages: In early stages of the season cut down on travel, more revenue generating local derbies, support player availability
League Model 1 – Teams complete their conference then play all other teams home and away. 26 fixtures in total. League winner best record from all fixtures played.
League Model 2 – Teams complete their conference then play all other teams home or away. 19 fixtures in total. League winner best record from all fixtures played.
League Model 3 – Teams complete their conference. 12 games in total. Conference winners play-off to decide league winner.

More details early next week
Regards,
Steve

Next we have words from Head Coach Kyle Marriott and Club Captain Miles Davey. What follows is not an article written from them but the message they have pushed out to all senior players ahead of pre-season. It’s tangible evidence of the hard work Director of Rugby Steve Murley and his ‘Return to Rugby’ (r2r) working group (which every section at St Austell has representation on).

Good afternoon gents, I hope you have all enjoyed the extended break from rugby and are ready to get back to it in some way. As you will have worked out already, it will not be the usual return to pre-season you may be used to. Myself, the other coaches and members of the committee have been busy putting structures in place to ensure we can get back to training in the safest possible way.

Tuesday and Thursday sessions will be split into 2 groups, forwards and backs. This also gives us an opportunity to work on position specific fitness elements. Sessions will run 6.30pm - 7.15pm and 7.30pm - 8.15pm, starting with forwards at 6.30pm Thursday 2nd July and alternating thereafter. It is extremely important you let us know of your training attendance prior to the session using the Heja app that Miles has sent the link for. If timing of the session is an issue please let us know in advance and we will try to accommodate you.
We are currently at phase B of return to rugby allowing us to have up to 24 players on a pitch in groups of 6. Each group will include a coach or senior player who will lead the session designed by Sam and myself. It is important you are kitted out ready to train on arrival and either bring your own hand sanitiser or some will be provided. All equipment will be sterilised before and after the session and we must observe social distancing at all times. Players should bring their own water bottles and not share at any point. During any rest intervals we must maintain our social distancing of two metres, preferably more when we are blowing hard.

At the end of the session it is important we exit the field promptly and depart Tregorrick prior to any other groups arriving.

This all may seem quite severe but it is an expectation that these requirements are adhered to and by completing the google form that goes along side to this message you are e agreeing to these requirements.

The plan is to use these stipulations to start our pre-season with intense and specific fitness giving us the best opportunity to begin the season with a bang. We expect the phases to move on quite quickly to allow us to get stuck into more rugby specific elements but as with all things at the moment nothing is guaranteed.

Apologies for the length of the message, any questions please get in touch. I can’t wait to get back out there and I am looking forward to the season ahead. #COYS!

Prize Draw
Onto other matters! Stu ‘Widge’ Widger has offered to run an online prize draw. We have made it no secret that we face uncertain times and every penny is going to be vital to us continuing to offer fantastic community rugby, friendship and a feeling of belonging.

I will put an article out specifically about this at some point very soon but you can start to help us protect our existing funds by buying a few raffle tickets. We have set up a PayPal account to allow contactless purchases. The prizes for this round are a cheeseboard and bottle of port, 2 x gourmet burger meals from the Smoking Hog BBQ company (situated at Tregorrick Park) and a full English Breakfast Tray. All prizes will be delivered to your doorstep if you are the lucky winners (unless you enter from somewhere like Australia...we proabaly won;t do doorstep delivery to there but will work something out!).

To enter please use the email events@staustellrfc.co.uk to pay by PayPal. Please ensure you put your name in the comments section so we know who to assign ticket numbers to. On receipt of your payment we will assign ticket numbers. It’s £1 a ticket and the draw will be on Saturday 12th July so you’ve got just over 2 weeks to buy some tickets! If you are struggling with PayPal and want to enter get in touch with me (IG) or Dai Powell and we will help you to enter.

Fooooooooooddds Up!
Speaking of the Smoking Hog BBQ Company…They are opening their site up at Tregorrick Park on Saturday 4th July 12-8pm. Again I will put an article specific to this in the next 48 hours incl the menu, how to pre-order etc They can take card payments and from next Saturday onwards (their grand opening day) they will open every Friday 4pm-8pm, Saturday 12-8pm and Sunday 12-5pm. If you want to discuss this now with Rob he is contactable on 07583 945111 or search for the Smoking Hog BBQ Company on Facebook.

Non-Playing Membership
Lastly I said I would share with you the non-playing membership prices for the coming season. We have thought long and hard about this via a specific working group consisting of myself, Paul Hayes, Dai Powell and Steve Murley.

A paper was produced to show the rest of the Exec our thoughts and findings. We mused over 5 different scenarios ranging from a normal start to rugby, a normal start with less games, a delayed start, a start then a stop (second wave) and no rugby whatsoever. In the end we concluded that we should plan to get as near as a full season as possible and base our membership prices against that. I lifted the following paragraph straight out of the paper. Membership is a critical element of our revenue that without it we wouldn’t survive:

“It is important to remember that a non-playing membership is not just about watching Saints rugby at home. It is also about being a member of St Austell RFC, of being part of an institution people are proud and protective of. In addition, to many, it provides a social life, friendship opportunities and camaraderie, and that can be difficult to put a price on.”

In a year of firsts we have another one…we will be selling all memberships this year via the RFU's Game Management System (GMS). It allows for less person-to-person contact, people can set up attractive payment schemes if things are tight and the RFU give us more perks the more we use GMS. Last season Youth did their player registration on GMS and despite a few hiccups, we achieved it (and all thanks to the Youth team of people who made that happen). We all learned a great deal from that.

If the thought of GMS scares you then please don’t worry. We will be offering help over the internet, telephone and even laptops and operators in the club to get you on. This is another article I will be writing up in greater detail soon so keep your eyes peeled! If you don’t have a GMS username and password then your task for this week could be to get one. The link to do that is HERE. We will be loading up the membership options over the next two weeks then I will tell you when its available to buy.

The 20/21 non-playing membership process are as follows:
• VP - £100 but any amount above that can be offered. For ex-players and/or those with a strong affiliation with the club. Payable in July and will run through to the end of the season we get to play

• Cardinal - £80 but any amount above that can be offered. For those who wish to be able to vote at the AGM, access home games and who have an obvious connection to the club. This membership application for new Cardinal must be seconded by two other Cardinals or VPs

• Supporters - £60 but any amount above that can be offered. For those who just want to be members, help out the club, are not bothered about voting rights and want to watch rugby.

That’s it for Saints Way #8. If you want to be the star of Blog#9 let me (Ian G) know via events@staustellrfc.co.uk. We are all eager to hear from all of you and how you are getting on so drop me a line. Below is the Exec contact list as usual…we really do want to hear from you if you are struggling in any way or if you want to get involved at the club. If you don’t want to phone or text and you’re on social media use instant messaging?

Chairman - Joel Double – 07366 397142
Vice-Chairman - Ian Grantham – 07834 525122
Honorary Treasurer - Dai Powell – 07908 208398
Honorary Secretary - Paul Hayes – 07515 881799
DOR/Director - Steve Murley – 07802 647052
Director - Rhian Roberts – 07929 327708
Director - Chris Passmore – 07791 770294
Youth Chair - Nick Bailey - 07795984132