Mission Statement

At Campion RFC we are dedicated to our Club and our fellow players, proud of our traditions and our roots & friendship through sport!

AUCTORE DEO!

1ST XV

For latest news see www.pitchero.com/clubs/campionrfc

Campion RFC

Newsletter Issue 1 February 2019

Words of wisdom from our Captain & Vice Captain! On behalf of all the players’ we would like to thank all VP's, spectators, sponsors and friends of the club. Your support is much appreciated by the whole squad! Recent seasons haven’t always been the easiest with such a young squad who have had to transition from school-boy to men's rugby overnight in some cases. However, I’m sure you will all agree, we have risen to the occasion, playing in the Campion tradition often to the despair of our coaches but the enjoyment of the supporters! The hard work behind the scenes for the past 2 to 3 seasons has meant we have kept our squad together whilst players have really grow into their roles which is paying dividend on and off pitch,. This includes a revived social life (either the Ship or the Tap with camaraderie between players at an all-time high. The development and maturity of players, through both individual and team performances has been commendable. We kicked off the year by taking on top of the table Epping for the return fixture after narrowly losing by 2 points at Cottons Park earlier in the season. Giving away 2 to 3 stone per man in the front five was always going to be difficult but we invariably expect to be targeted physically and to the lads testament, they never shy away from a challenge. After a game where the lead changed 8 times, Epping were relieved to hear the final whistle with Campion ending the game 1 point in arrears. We were bitterly disappointed after the game; having lost by 3 points over both games to the top of the table is a hard pill to swallow. However we have to remember how far we have come in the recent seasons, with Epping players and supporters commenting after the game on how well we played we must be proud of our efforts and with our match day squad having an age average of 23 I’m sure there will be many more wins to come. Following on from this, it seems the 'January blues' have certainly been the case for 2019, with the 1st XV losing to Kings Cross Steelers 10 - 17 at home, a game and performance we have quickly buried in the back of our minds . Losing to Ilford Wanderers 23 - 7 in our last away performance, with a very much scrambled side fraught with various injuries, the 'losing' virus spread deep into the heart of the second XV, who narrowly lost to both Chelmsford & Harlow. However, we must not dwell on these results and praise the outstanding efforts by Kev O'Reilly, getting a strong 2's squad out on a weekly basis (something that the club hasn't had in years) and reflected in second teams dominating 96-10 win against Canvey Island 2's in early Jan-uary. Following a dismal start to the New Year’s fixtures it’s time to dust off the boots, shake away the gloom and get the season back on track! Charlie Baker 1XV Captain + Tom Ronayne 1XV Vice-Captain

2nd XV

Report courtesy Danny McEvoy! Our 2nd XV are having a fantastic season ably led by Kev O’Reilly who uses up all his mobile phone credit by phoning all and sundry to get a team out on Saturdays! The band of brothers he manages to gather play out of their skins each game to produce the results they have already. There is a spattering of the old brigade the like of Richard Tucker, Niall Tiernan and more recently a slimmed down Rich Walsh, who spread their pearls of wisdom throughout the squad enabling the younger lads such as Jake Turner and Liam O’Brien, to name a few, to shine! Together they make a formidable unit. There are so many good things happening at the club right now and with a 2nd XV with so much talent we have young guys knocking on the door of the 1st XV! They are currently sitting 5th in Division 4 which is middle of the table, six points below

Chelmsford Undertakers, not sure it’s a good position to be, below undertakers!!

Well done lads, keep up the good work for the remainder of the season and we can look

forward with confidence to future seasons.

Can’t sign off before congratulating Kev and his lovely lady on the birth of a new son in

January, will we see the O’Reilly boys wearing the Campion colours in future years?

Our future! See report on following page from Rich Tucker

It is one of the enduring mysteries of rugby why Campion RFC is not a leading light in London and Eastern Counties. Campion is probably the largest rugby nursery, with 150 boys starting at the School every September, all of whom have to play rugby. Given these numbers as a club, we should be overflowing with players but given the high attrition rate and the fact that by sixth form these numbers are decimated sad-ly this is not the case! In 2014 when my son and Nick Walsh’s son joined Campion in year 7, it soon became clear that there were too many lads wanting to play rugby and that it was unlikely that the school could field enough teams to enable everyone to have a game, which lead us to decide to start a youth section for the club. We played our first match on 25th Sept 2016 against Dagenham RFC at Cottons Park. The team was made up of an enthusiastic bunch of lads that hadn’t really played in a team before! We got off to a great start with Connor FFnessey scoring a try in the first minute! Alas, it got a lot harder, as Dagenham ran in quite a few more tries than us. We played a total of 14 matches in the first season and while we improved it is fair to say it was very tough and we did suffer at the hands of some very established teams. The 2nd season started with some pre-season at the school and Cottons and we also added another team with the boys in the year below. In the 2017 -18 season the U14s played a total of 17 matches and the U13s played a total of 17 and 14 matches respectively. The U14s had a much improved season, winning 8 of their games but the U13s had a similar experience to our first season. By the end of this season, 40 boys who would not have played regularly at the school were running out representing Campion Rugby. This current season U15s had a very tough start with some players drifting away from rugby but with a bit of encouragement from team mates we now have a large squad of 26 players, playing some great rug-by, giving a good account of ourselves in every game. Out of the 26, 10 lads play regularly for the school. The U14s are gaining in confidence with an ever growing squad and it’s fair to say that we are getting there. By the end of this season the two teams will have played 43 matches between them and the lads in the U15s, who played in the first ever match against Dagenham, will have played 50 matches for Campion RFC! We have had a couple of matches in other age groups, and this season the U12s are playing against Ba-sildon and an U17s team will play against Upminster. It has been a steep learning curve proving to be a lot harder than running an adult side, although I do recognise some of the behaviour!!! With every player there are parents, brothers and sisters, grand-parents etc, so Sunday mornings have a real club feel. Our main objectives in setting up the teams are, to give lads a run out who would otherwise not play, for them to enjoy it, and in the long term build a loyalty / commitment to Campion Rugby. It is still baffling to me that so many Campion alumni play for other junior clubs, albeit that some of those played for other clubs as boys and want to continue to do so but others just don’t identify with Campion Rugby. We hope that running the junior sides will address both these issues. Massive thanks to all the refs who help us out, Brian Sams who is amazingly supportive, Nick, Pat, John, Eugene and Tony for all their help, the school for their support, spreading the word and sending players our way. With special thanks going to Helen who sorts out the catering and our sponsors, JJ, Martin and Chris. Are we organised? Not 100% but we’re getting there! Richard Tucker

Auctore Deo

Report Danny McEvoy “The voice of reason”

On miserable cold wet days, such as this, as I stand on the touchline I often ask “why am I doing

this” and then the lads pull off a display full of heart and instantly I know why!

All credit should go to the squad, many of whom have been at the club for three or four years

now, suffering more losses than gains but who persevere nonetheless. Since Christmas there has

been a blip but we are working on our weaknesses and trying to improve in many areas and the

emphasis needs to be on working as a team!

Together with Pat, Luke and Kev we have the club’s best interests at heart ,all of us having been

connected with Campion RFC for many years as players and now coaches (some still playing)!

Special mention should go to Kev O’Reilly for all the time and effort he puts in to get a 2nd XV

out most weeks.

Our end goal is to get more guys to training and develop the team ethos, enabling the “young

guns” to make a natural progression from Schoolboy to men’s rugby . Overall we know the areas

we need to work on to control the games for longer periods and under the excellent leadership

of captain Charlie Baker we are moving in the right direction!

Report Dan Browne—Social Secretary

Who is your No 1 fan Dan? Four seasons down at the club and I have finally been given some responsibility, I am not sure if the delay had anything to do with past Social antics but I guess that conversation is for another day… 2018 has been a successful year on the Social Front – We had the tour to Cardiff which Matt Williams brilliantly organised ! Honestly I believe the Cardiff tour has led to an injection of Posi-tivity and togetherness with in the squad that is being shown on and off the pitch. I took the reins from Matt to become Social Sec which were big shoes to fill as he is Size 11 and I am a Size 8…!! My First Social was in aid of Goodbye to Dan Maling who set off to Australia with his girl-friend. Dan has informed me that he and Georgia are enjoying themselves and every Satur-day he is texting to know how the Old Boys got on. My main plan this year as Social Secretary is to of course make the club some money and bring everyone together, The atmos-phere at the club at the moment is without doubt the best it has been since I joined the Old Boys, I believe if I can get socials planned and get everyone down the club to support these and keep morale high in both 1stand 2nd XVs this will only help with performances on the pitch. So far so good I am enjoying the role and we have lots more exciting events to come, please see be-low. Socials on the horizon 9th March – St Patricks Celebrations (TBC) 6th April – Kangaroo Court ( Last Game of the Season) 13th April – Old Boys Formal Dinner (TBC) 3-6th May – OLD BOYS TOUR TO BENIDORM Ladies and Gents we have quite the year ahead of us, something I am really looking forward to playing a part in and I hope to see as many new and old faces down the club as possible. Remember the beer tastes sweeter after a win and the support we get from fans really makes a difference to the boys, so Thank You to everyone that gives up their Saturdays to support us!

SPONSORSHIP

As always we are looking for sponsorship and this year it is particularly important

as we have had to spend £5000 installing a new boiler and heating in the

clubhouse and haven’t been able to recoup any of the costs from any RFU funding!

This has decimated our funds!

We have just received accreditation from Essex RFU and with is comes more

requirements for updating and bringing Campion RFC in line with Safeguarding and

with it comes costs! We have to supply first aid bags, fully equipped for every

team and we would like to provide a Defib to be held at the club. We would also

like to replace the hand dryers in the toilets which is likely to cost around £500!

Firstly a big thank you to our existing sponsors, without whom we couldn’t survive:

The Walsh Family

MES (Baker family)

Anonymous sponsorship of physio

Upminster Catenians Sponsor for DeFib (£100)

Tilar Transport

Orbus Consultancy

Can you help with sponsorship, either directly or maybe through a company you

have contact with?

WISH LIST

Playing kit

2 new sets of pitch flags

New gym equipment for training sessions (Olympic bars, battle ropes, power and

drag sleds).

These are just a few things to help our lads get fit to win games!

Please let me know if you can help in any way big or small, all donations most

gratefully received!

Maureen Leech