As the new Chairman of the club I am hoping to bring about a few changes; well at least I can try!

As many of you know I have been around the club for over 25 years involved in playing, coaching & committee work so I thought I should go for this ultimate challenge....can I make a difference?

On the plus side, throughout the summer a lot of work has been carried out on the grounds, club house and car park setting us up well for the new season. I thank all those people for all the hard work they have put in. On the downside, it is very disappointing how many people turned up to help tidy and remove stones from the car park. Clearly I have got a lot of work to do to get more volunteers involved.

Following a kind donation of an HD projector from one of our VP’s and the assistance of some “expert” club members the screen and equipment has been fully installed to allow us to watch the World Cup on a big screen in HD. Hopefully this will encourage more of our members to watch rugby at the club. As stage 2 of this project I want to see a good quality distributed sound system installed. With the expert help available to us we have been able to identify suitable equipment to give us a good sound system but we now need to raise the funds to do it. The total cost will be around £1000 and some funds have already been collected for this project.......any donations would be greatly appreciated so that we can implement the project quickly.

Moving on to the playing front, we are a bit light on players at the moment which is not that unusual for this time of year, particularly as there are England games going on. As an incentive to get more players involved in the club we have not only got the above projector but I have also re-introduced the Man of the Match award which is an engraved pint glass with the club logo, season and team reference on it. I am introducing this to begin with at 1st team level to see how well it goes. It certainly appeared to go down well when the first one was presented at our away game against Falmouth. Each glass is numbered to identify ownership. Maybe as we roll on further through the season we can have a special “Man of the Match” event involving a few drinks.....any ideas let me know.

Although I will not be around for the first home game of the season I hope that those of you attending the club will be able to witness the presentation of the man of the match award by one of our committee members. This will enable you to see just who are the committee members, as we will try and use a different member at each home game.

Another major activity we are working on is a club tour at the end of this season. There is a sub-committee setup to address this and I am particularly keen that this is a “quality” tour so that players see it as incentive to play rugby for us and just as importantly set about raising funds to subsidise their own tour. I hope that in this way some of them will get the bug for selling raffle tickets and raising funds for future cub events.

Just as we are planning a tour, we are in discussions with Marlow RFC about them touring with us at the end of the season, as well. I am trying to use this opportunity to pull together a tour package. At present we are thinking of Rugby on the Saturday followed by dinner at the club, an outdoor events package for the Sunday morning followed by entertainment at the club before they departs on the Sunday. Once we have worked through their itinerary with them and worked out the accommodation we may be able to setup a tour package/model we can use for future years with other clubs. Any ideas on bunkhouse accommodation would be appreciated.

Finally, for now, I want to work on a closer relationship with our junior section. On idea I have, not new, is to get one of our younger teams to assist us on a Saturday and play a bit of mini rugby before the 1st XV game, perhaps help with collecting gate money and running out onto the pitch as escorts for our players. Hopefully their parents will come and watch and them we can meet each other.

That’s enough for now, enjoy the World Cup and don’t forget to give us a donation if you want to see the new sound system in place sooner!

Bob Boreham

Chairman – for now!