Announcing the winners of the June 100 Club draw.
The 100 Club is a major fundraiser for the club if you would like to be part of the monthly draw please contact Alan Skinner at skinners205@btinternet.com
#oneTWRFC
Category: Front Page
Academy Re-launch
Tunbridge Wells RFC are delighted to announce the re-launch of our academy section.
The academy, which was badly impacted by Covid, started rebuilding last season and is now being formally re-launched for the 23/24 season to include boys and girls from U16-U18. We are really excited about this and already anticipate exceeding 100 boys and girls playing as part of the academy section.
To enable this, we are delighted to announce Simon Whatling, former premiership player, and past-Tunbridge Wells senior coach will lead the academy coaching team. Simon will be supported in his role by a team of coaches, including England International Tammy Samuel, who will oversee the Girls Academy Rugby.
The TWRFC academy mission is to work with all players (both boys and girls), regardless of their ability, to develop them to their highest potential. The academy aims to develop players both on and off the pitch: building rugby skills, fostering well-being, and nurturing life skills. Our goal is to create competitive teams whilst ensuring players enjoy their rugby journey.
Mike Rigby, Club Chairman said “We are delighted to welcome Simon back to St Mark’s as Head Coach of our Academy. He is pivotal to what is a significant upgrade to our Academy, and will lead our joint boys and girls Academy to ensure it is best in class. His significant experience: playing in top flight rugby; coaching senior rugby; running the Blackheath academy; and as a school rugby teacher, will mean he is able to lead us to our ambition of making our boys and girls transition to university/senior rugby safely and that they all play to the best of their ability. Through his oversight of the Academy, Simon will ensure players develop good life skills to give them resilience and independence. Welcome home Simon!
I am also delighted to see Tammy lead our girls Academy. Tammy has followed her rugby path all the way to International representation and she will be able to lead the girls to follow in her footsteps.
We now have a fantastic team of coaches to lead TWRFC Academy to new heights.”
For more information please Academy Manager, Martin Croker: 07770 936977, academy@twrfc.com.
Simon Whatling
Academy Head Coach
Simon (a former first team coach at Tunbridge Wells), joined the club after an impressive senior playing career, playing fly-half and inside-centre at both championship and premiership level. A graduate of Bath rugby academy, Simon represented England at U16 to U21 level. During his career he played rugby at London Welsh, Cornish Pirates, and Worcester Warriors, concluding his playing career at Blackheath.
Since coaching the club’s senior team, Simon has remained part of the TW family with both his children playing in the minis section. Simon is committed to our philosophy of developing the entire player, and will be combining his coaching role with his position as assistant director of rugby at the illustrious Epsom College.
Tammy Samuel
Director of Ladies Rugby
Academy girl’s section – Head Coach
Tammy is a women’s rugby pioneer having played when the game was first established for teams such as Cambridge University, Waterloo, Saracens and Blackheath mainly in the second row and at number 8. She gained 6 caps for England, played for England Students.
She has been coaching for over 25 years and is a level 2 coach and referee. She has coached every age group at TWRFC from U6-U18; both girls and boy and was instrumental in setting up and developing our girls and women’s section which now boasts 100+ players.
Tammy’s daughters all play rugby. She is passionate about bringing on girls rugby and developing them as players and is excited to join the academy alongside her role as TWRFC U18 girls head coach and coaching Kent girls at both U16 and U18 levels.
KIWI CAMP IS BACK!!!
We are pleased to announce that NZ Rugby Experience will be returning to St Marks this year with their popular Kiwi Rugby Camp. The camp will run 31 Jul – 04 Aug for age groups Under 6 to Under 16 and attendees can be booked for the whole week or individual days – there are also discounts for multiple sibling bookings. For full details, pricing and booking form please go to:
https://club.spond.com/landing/courses/twrfc/240791676D78423D9CCED7FB8F6D9D8E
Places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment!
Membership 23/24
The board has set membership fees for the 23/24 season as below.
Membership of TWRFC brings a number of benefits including: the right to apply for clubs allocation of international tickets; hire of the clubhouse hire; attending club lunches/events and bring guests; and of course for playing members a little bit of rugby.
| Senior Playing Members | £95 |
| Family Membership | £180 Single Child £230 Multiple Children |
| Social Membership & VPs | £95 |
Further details can be found on the membership page.
The increase reflects the increase in ongoing costs of services and ground rates at St Marks’.
All family and senior playing members will shortly receive a payment request via Spond; we ask that this is paid prior to the start of the season (Sept. 3rd). New players are very welcome to have two trial sessions prior to joining and paying membership subscriptions. It’s not easy for Spond to track this – so please do bear with me if it chases before you have finished your trial.
For Social members, and VPs, it saves work for me if you pay either via spond or direct-debit. Anybody wishing to start paying their membership via Spond, can sign up here. For those paying by direct debits, the amount will be updated automatically to reflect the 23/24 subscription (you will be notified by goCardless when this happens).
Tunbridge Wells RFC Youth section has a policy that rugby should be accessible to all, irrelevant of financial or economic background. In cases of economic hardship the club is able to offer alternative payment schemes or reduced fees on a case by case basis; you are also able to apply to the Anthony Clarke memorial fund for support. Please contact the team manager at your age group who will then be able to discuss this on a confidential basis with the membership secretary to seek approval for lower or no fees dependent on circumstances.
Martin Croker
Membership Secretary
membership@twrfc.com
Chairman’s update
Dear Members,
As we reach the end of a fantastic season there are lots of things worthy of note and hence I wanted to share some of them with you. Enjoy the read and have a great summer. Hope to see you all very soon,
COYW
Mike
Club Chairman
Future of the club
This is the part of the club that looks to ensure we remain a vibrant community sports club for many decades to come. Steve Daly who looks after this has had lots to work on this year and remains focussed on ensuring the club has the best facilities possible. Our priorities remain: Pitch improvements to increase availability or sport at St Marks; Parking improvements to reduce down our impact on our neighbours and make a better arrival experience to our members/guests; and Clubhouse improvements to allow us to accommodate our increasing diversity of membership and create a bigger social space. This year we have progressed our planning application to a stage where it is now submitted and awaiting a decision. The support of the RFU, ECB, Sport England and Strutt’s has been incredibly helpful. The option to re-locate fell away due to a challenge releasing legacy restrictions on our land. This year we invested further into our pitches (£40k), into our gym (£10k), and into our storage options to make more room in the club room. (£7k).Thank you to all involved to this point especially Richard Bains. If we are successful we will need to raise a few £ to pay for it all….
Playing
This is our main reason for being running our club to ensure Ladies, Men, Boys, Girls can use St Marks to enjoy rugby, cricket, fitness, interaction and socialising.
Stuart Montgomery is our chair of playing and is omnipresent at St Marks out of his pure dedication for our Club. He is well supported by our Director of Men’s Rugby Simon Jervis. The seniors have had a cracking season with the 1sts successfully achieving a comfortable mid-table position where they beat all sides above them. The squad was strengthened in numbers and ability and were well coached by the great team of Chaz, Mike, Stretts and Ben. This also resulted in a strong 2nd XV who won their league. It also meant the social side were not called upon to bolster the 2nd XV and could get some good team spirit and momentum. Numbers were great and Andy steered them to 1st place in the league. The Vets played rugby and socialised well. All teams were officiated by Lino in exemplary fashion. One new aspect that has grown and grown over the past two years is ‘touch tuesday’ where we welcome all for fun, exercise and socials. Come and give it a go!
So in short for Adult Men’s: One solid Mid-table performance and 2 table topping champion teams.
This year also saw our first league outing for the TWRFC Ladies team. This was a magical moment for our Director of Ladies rugby Simon Parsons who achieved a multi-year ambition. Awesome. During the year the Ladies grew in numbers; grew in spirit; grew in technical skills and the result was of course improving results. I loved watching this team get stronger and stronger. BRILLIANT.
In the youth section we hit another milestone as the proposition we offer just gets better and better. Laurence Taylor our Youth Chairman, for over a decade, has (with his 100’s of volunteers) created a youth section that is one of the strongest in our region. The passion of the coaches, the organisation on a weekly basis, the investment in training/equipment are all testament o his leadership. As Laurence stands down from his role as his kids Josh and Ollie progress to adult rugby we say THANK YOU. Enjoy relaxing on Sunday mornings Sir, you deserve it.
Some achievements this year:
- The TWRFC Academy re-established in 2023, this summer we add the Ladies academy to the set up. Well organised, professionally coached, focussed on delivering strong, confident and able adults.
- Youth membership remains stable at well over 700 for third year running (almost at capacity with our pitches)
- The Mini’s section is looking really strong and means we now have 10 age groups with over 50 kids in them.
- Ladies section is now so close to 100 members.
- Too much success to list but we have age group County champions, lots of County selections, and several progressed to professional academies.
Replacing Laurence as our Youth Chairman are two people:
- Simon Hughes will be Youth Chair
- Suzanne George will be Deputy Youth Chair
- Alex Nicholson remains as Mini’s chair
It is worth me pausing for a second to reference someone who is synonymous with the playing part of our club: Bruce Elliot. Bruce has covered every game (home and away) for as long as we can remember. The images are engaging, descriptive and for many who can’t make the game keep them in touch with our club. Bruce is stepping back a bit next season and will cover a few less games. Those games you are not there Bruce, you will be sorely missed.
The Clubhouse
The hub of our club, where we celebrate great wins and tell stories of lucky oppositions over food and refreshment.
A big step forward this year saw Simon Prince come in as General Manager. Simon has had a huge impact on lots of aspects of the club: Providing food after training, ensuring we are fully stocked, keeping on top of maintenance jobs, overseeing our investments, booking external events and managing our team of weekend staff. What a shift, thank you.
We also have Jude ensuring all our Saturday guests are hosted expertly and made to feel very welcome. The lunches have been a huge success this year.
The result of these is that the turnover through the bar/café/catering has risen nicely reflecting people have enjoyed our club and choose to be here.
The administrators
Saving the best to last. The team of volunteers who just make it all run smoothly and help out across all aspects of the above. Be that Pitches (Roger), Commercial (Simon), Membership (Martin), Treasury (Don), Marketing (Drew), Secretarial (Michelle), Safeguarding (Dawn), H&G (Nick), President (Jimmy), VP Liaison (Fran), Kit (Charlie), Disciplinary (Mark) First Aid (Oliver), etc etc I am sure I missed lots of but you have all ensured we kept straight and tidy this year. Thank you, you are the unsung heroes of our club.
It is worth singling out one person this year: Michelle has been supporting the Senior squad for at least the last 7 years, liaising with the opposition, with our league secretariat, with Kent RFU. She knows rugby inside out and has been a great assistance to me personally. If you want something done, ask Michelle!! Michelle is stepping back from her fixture and senior club role to focus on the Club Secretary role. Thank you Michelle for making everything happen so smoothly
A few amends to roles as we transition through the summer:
- Youth Chairman: Laurence Taylor steps aside and hands to Simon Hughes
- Deputy Youth Chair: New role taken by Suzanne George
- Commercial Director: Simon Hughes hands to Nick Van O (Nick takes responsibility for all non-rugby operations/income)
VOLUNTEERS WELCOME: As you can see this club is run with many hands helping out. It is remarkably rewarding and quite a lot of fun as well. If you have a spare hour or two then please do get in contact and we’d love to have you as part of our team. Please contact Mike……
Planning Update
Members,
I wanted to drop you a quick line with an update on our planning permission to build an Alternative Grass Pitch (AGP) at St Marks.
After two years of significant hard work we now have a date for both Tunbridge Wells and Wealden Planning Committees to hear our application. We will first visit the TWBC Planning committee next Wednesday 17th May and then we will take the trip down the road to Wealden on the 15th June.
There has been a tremendous amount of hard work to get to this point and so many people have put significant effort in. The Board and I appreciate all of your efforts as well as having everything crossed for two positive meetings.
We will keep you posted on all mediums as to how we get on and as always please do let me know any questions that you have.
COYW
Mike
MATCH REPORT: TWRFC 1XV (17) – Sudbury 1XV (21)
Match Reporter: Fran Colangelo
With the pitches at St Marks unplayable Saturdays game against Sudbury was switched to the 4G at Boys Grammar and a good crowd turned up to watch Wells first home game of 2023.
The opening exchanges saw Wells show early promise with ball in hand and a penalty to the corner after 4 minutes put Wells in prime position for an early score. Sadly the ball was overthrown and Sudbury attacked from deep showing they threat the possessed.
With the rain having stopped this was going to be a quick game on the artificial surface and it was a good bounce off a line out that saw the Sudbury 8 go clean through unopposed to score under the posts – with the 10 converting for a 0 – 7 lead. Wells came straight back with Nick Doherty charging upfield. Sudbury were penalised and Monty took the 3 to reduce the gap after 15 minutes.
The next 15 minutes was all about defence, with Wells defending their line as the visitors looked to add to their lead. Jason Lord was at the heart of the defensive effort putting in some huge hits. An injury to skipper Mike Doherty saw a break in play of 5 minutes and time to catch their breath. This seemed to energise the home side and the next 10 were all Wells. Attack after attack hit a wall of Sudbury defence but they started to infringe and it wasn’t long before a yellow was issued. Wells opted for the scrum but it didn’t go to plan and Sudbury cleared. Wells came back, picking and driving closer to the line and with it more penalties against Sudbury. It was the last play of the game when Wells finally got reward for their efforts and a quick tap penalty was sent out wide to Max Hobbs who got over in the corner. Monty slotted a great conversion and Wells went in 10-7 at half time.
With Sudbury still down to 14 men Wells attacked from the off as the second half started, 5 minutes of possession as Wells used the pick and drive again eventually scrum half Finn White saw a gap and sped over the line – Monty converted and Wells extended their lead to 17-7. It was all Wells at this stage and Wells came so close to another score as Monty found some space but the last pass went to ground and Sudbury cleared. Then against the run of play Sudbury found some space and their hard running 8 and 12 created space for a fine try converted to reduce the Wells lead to 17-14. Sudbury were now in the ascendency and everything was going their way with their 8 at the centre of everything. It wasn’t long before they took the lead with another try as Wells ran out of defenders. The conversion went over and Sudbury had the lead 17-21. They looked a different side to what we had seen for most of the game and nothing was going right for Wells. Great defence held up what looked a certain try for Sudbury and Wells cleared. Sadly Wells line out was not functioning as it should and some key positions were lost.
With 10 to go both sides attacked at every opportunity but Wells could not find that magic touch to grab a victory at the death. Sudbury held on and were good for their victory. Wells will feel this was one that slipped away with the chances they had. They rebuild for the Kent Derby match against Medway away on 21st Jan – 2pm KO. MOM for Sudbury was 8 H Cowling with their 12 J Summer a close second. For Wells Finn White took the mom award.