Keswick Rugby Club News

You will see from a post last week that we entered the RFU President XV’s competition and you will also see we did not have high hopes – well gues what

WE ARE THE NATIONAL RUNNERS UP – MINI & YOUTH CLUB of the YEAR !

Gobsmacked would be a suitable word !

On behalf of the Club can I thank every one of our volunteers from the parent that drives our youngsters to away games to all the coaching staff, refs, beer festival volunteers etc

THIS AWARD IS ABOUT YOU – THANK YOU for making us the 2nd best Youth Rugby Club in the Country

A special thanks also to our County RDO Liam Nichols for twisting our arms to enter !

Our Congratulations go to the well deserving  North Dorset RFC who were the overall winners

Perhaps Next Year !

 

 

After considerable work and problems behind the scenes Keswick has been nominated as one of the 2 Cumbrian Teams along with Carlisle to enter the National Stages again this year

Our first fixture is at home on March 15th against Fylde

the fixture is meant to be on the 8th but Fylde are on tour that day – more calls to sort that out and get RFU Approval for the change of date

If we win this game then we should be playing the winner of Caldy vs Ryton at home – however this game is meant to take place on the 22nd – slight problem – 250 girls playing at the Club in the Girls tournament that day – speaking with everyone concerned to try and get the game moved to the following week – 29th – of course we have to win the 1st round game first !

On and Off the Pitch its been another hectic week – I’m sure the work load on Alan and other is not really understood and appreciated

Watching Alan try to get fixtures for 2nd teams and youth games whilst handling player registration quries and the plethora of calls from players and parents is a wonder to behold ! 

All sorts go on unoticed in the background each week – here’s a sample

- Call Allerdale to get the mess around the recycling bins cleaned up

- get Wilsons to drop by and dig an 8foot hole in the pitch to make sure the ground is OK for floodlight stanchons if we get the grant – and and by the way you couldnt do a favour and move the dumper bags of sand and gravel from the front of the car park to the back of the grandstand – please !

- the gridle in the kitchen has shorted – get electrician in

- dishwasher in kitchen borken – get Diddy in to have a look

- Willy fights with line marking machine and finally wins !

- meet with new CLub solictors Baines Wilson to organise legal matters and apply for extended licence for the patio

- sort out unused Beer Festival glasses to check order numbers for this year

- 5 people want to do Level 1 Coaching course – only 3 places left – Alan sweet talks all 5 onto the course

its pretty endless – more hands less work so if you have any soare time and skills we can find a use for it !

 

A lot of work went into this application – there’s about 28 pages plus appendicies etc etc

The Awards For All Grant pot is for “small” lottery applications upto a maximum of £10,000 – the good thing about it though is it’s a pretty quick turnaround time to fiund oout if you have been given the grant - about 6 weeks

Anyway Friday night got home to find a letter from Awards For All

WE GOT £10,000

this is towards the grounds maintenance part of the project – this is tremendous news as we can actually start to look at buying some of the equipment and get to work – so watch out for a new tractor !

so if you see Jock, willie and Peter making strange noises whilst looking at a magazine dont worry its not a girlie mag its a Tractor catelogue !

 

Some grants are easier to apply for than others – O2 have one of the most straight forward schemes and its almost a pleasure to complete the application !

Anyway we have been awarded £750 towards the Grounds Maintenance part of the Grounds Project

hopefuilly from little acorns we may have a few oaks coming on the grants !

Mind you watching our players constantly texting on their phones we have probably only got back what they spend in a week !

 

The RFU runs an annual competition for Youth Scetions of Rugby Club’s known as the Presidents XV

 details at http://www.community-rugby.com/communityrugby/index.cfm?fuseaction=Home.Story&StoryTypeId=108&SectionId=811&StoryId=21457

Keswick has entered the competition in three categories

Seal of Approval Club of the Year, Club / Schools Link and Facilities

If you dont enter you cannt win – and we do have some good stories to tell so you never know !

the first hurdle of planning was achieved last Thursday when Keswick Town Council voted to actively support our application – it now goes to the National Park for the final decision – hopefully in March

Thanks to all the Town Councillors for their unanimous support

Some of you may have heard whispers about a new major project to improve the grounds. There has been considerable work going on in the background to try and achieve this. As with all projects its a question of money – or more acuraetly grants. In the past we have not had the best of luck gaining grant funding (we all remember the plans for the new Club House !)

 So whilst we have a plan some parts may not happen if we cannot find the grant funding.

However we are probably sufficiently down the road to let you know what we are trying to achieve.

 If we go back 10 years we in effect had 2 senior teams and two pitches so each pitch was played on once a fortnight. Maintenance was largely a friendly farmer cutting the grass a couple of times in the summer for sileage.

Today as well as the 2 senior teams we have 13 youth teams, run summer touch rugby and use the pitches for events such as the Beer festival, Convention Car Parking etc. The result is that the pitches have deteriorated signifiacntly over the last few years and are now in need of some extensive TLC. At the end of last season we undertook a major sanding, fertilising and grassing excercise that has already seen some benefit.

However we need to do a lot lot more to get the pitches capable of handling all the uses we put them to.

We have developed a 3 component plan and whilst we would like to do all the bits at the same time there will almost certainly be a need to phase some of the work partly for money reasons and partly so we always have one pitch in use.

The 3 components are :-

1. Improved Ground Maintenance – this means upping the level of cutting, fertilisling, aeration etc. To enable this we will need to bring much of the work back in house and purchase some major equipment including a tractor – the cost estimate for this part of the project is about £20,000 plus an annual cost of a further £3-4,000 for sand and fertiliser etc. We are going to need a team of volunteers to help with this – so if you fancy driving a tractor nowss your chance !

2. Improved Drainage – the existing pitch drainage is now so old it is doing very little. We therefore want to put in a complete new drainage system. The cost of putting systems in varies greatly depending on how extensive it is – a gold plated version would cost £70,000 a pitch ! – we are being a little more prudent but expect that we will be spending around £40,000 over a 3 year period to achieve this.

3. Floodlights – this has been a long term dream to get lights at the Club. We are in discusssion with the RFU to seek funding to help with this project – the sharp eyed among you will have seen a planning application has been submitted (we should hear if we get planning in March). We have had an initial qoute for lights that would provide match standard lighting on the 1st XV and training standard lighting on the 2nd team pitch and training area. But it doesnt come cheap we are looking at £70,000 plus VAT

We will keep yopu updated as we work on the project

Our local MP Tony has kindly agreed to be our guest of honour and hand out the trophies at the Girls Tournament on March 22nd

Tony has been a good friend of the Club for many years – in his early days he used to referee games at the Club and played for a certain unmentionable West Cumbrian team against us.

Tony is also the Chair of the Houses of Parliament cross party Rugby Group and his contacts in Westminster where he is a whip have helped us in the past.

With a young family and limited time at home Tony’s offer to attend on the 22nd is greatly appreciated.

You may have noticed the emergence of much improved line marking over the last few weeks.

Thanks to the efforts of Jock Clark and Willy Hodgson they have renovated 2 old line marking machines and have been religously laying down the white lines before matches.

It can be a real battle on the muddy pitches so thanks for all your hard work and sweat