Chairman's Report

Maldon Rugby Club President Peter Binder

The 2009/10 season started with Jerry Wood continuing as Chairman and Stuart Pearson returning to the role of Club Captain. The Club continued to attend events outside of Drapers in order to improve our profile. We again entered a float in the Maldon Carnival with youth members on board the Ager’s truck and senior players and trainers running alongside. Thanks to every-one for their help. The Club also attended the St George’s Day celebrations in the town and the Town Hall quiz. We also filled the tables at the Essex RFU Presi-dent’s Dinner and the Essex RFU Dinner. At a recent RBS rugby task force weekend we were awarded a plaque and £250. At our own Annual Dinner and Dance David Kiddle received an Essex RFU award for his outstanding service to Maldon Rugby Club.

We had three VP’s lunches which were all well attended. The first of these was for the Old Cooperians match. For the second, the match itself was ‘Snowed Off’ but the meal went ahead and only one place was cancelled; this was due to a strong 1st Team contingent boosting numbers. The 1st Team members must have enjoyed themselves because for the third lunch we should have been playing Upper Clapton. They had dropped out of the league so we watched the 3rd Team beat Phyllosans instead. We had sev-eral guests along to these lunches including John Whittingdale OBE MP, Maldon’s Mayor and Mayoress, the Chairman of the Youth Section and the President and Chairman of Maldon Cricket Club. My thanks go to Val for the food, Jerry Edmond for organising the wine and to all who attended for mak-ing the days so enjoyable.

We currently have 101 VPs including 26 life members and 7 honorary VPs. Our 2 new honorary VPs were John Whittingdale and Dave Redfern.

Today I had a phone call from Dick Jones who played in the first game against Ipswich. Dick lives in Chelmsford, is 90 years old, is still driving and runs a ballroom dance group. He has a photograph of the team who playedin that first match which he has promised to send to me (see further). He explained how we came to lose 44-0; when the fixture was arranged it was mentioned that it was Maldon’s first game, however, this somehow got mistranslated into Maldon’s 1st Team. So, instead of playing a lower side we ended up playing Ipswich 1st Team. To make matters worse we didn’t have a full contingent of rugby players so numbers were made up with footballers, none of whom were ever seen again! I hope Dick will be able to attend one of our VPs lunches this season.

I thank all of the Committee, Captains and Coaches for the hard work they have put into both playing and social events and look forward to an-other enjoyable year.

Peter Binder, President

Youth Chairman's Report

Dear Parents and Children,

Welcome back to another season at Maldon Rugby Club.

You will notice many changes this coming season with the new website which will enable on-line registration. The website is more user friendly, will be continuously updated and the Team Managers will be submitting a match report with photographs every Sunday evening following a match. By the time the season starts we should also have Wireless internet access at the club.

There will also be many changes to our coaching structure with the introduction of Team Managers who will take a lot of the pressure off of the coaches. Each team will have a Lead Coach and an Assistant Coach who in turn will have parent helpers who are CRB checked. With reference to the coaches, in each age group we will soon have a Level 1 coach, a first aider and a qualified referee. This is all to comply with our Seal of Approval, which is an ongoing process.

Car parking attendants will be required as we have a lot of home games next year. If you do have to park at the bottom car park (Heybridge Swifts) please continue to join us for a drink in the club house after training/matches. Each home game we will be holding a raffle as we did last season and the winning ticket will be drawn in the club house post match.

Last season was our first tour with the Mini’s and Midi’s. The trip to Holt started with an activity weekend at Kingswood, with the under 10’s, 11’s and 12’s staying and the other years joining us on the Sunday morning at Holt Rugby Club. All in all we had some fantastic results with the under 12’s, under 9’s and under 8’s coming second, the under 11’s winning – well done to Paul Langston and Mark Judd and thank you to the other teams who made the effort to come along. This shows that even a smaller club such as Maldon can outshine the bigger teams.

The tour this year for the mini’s and midis is once again at Holt where we will be staying at Kingswood. The actual date of the festival is 10th April 2011. If you would like to register for the activities weekend please see Astra in clubhouse Sunday mornings. We are hoping to take as many children as possible. We know that the children had a truly enjoyable time last year and we hope that they have an even better time this year. Accommodation is available to U9, U10, U11, U12, U13, and parents (should you really want to stay), and day entrance is open to U8 only. We will be entering an U7's team to play at the festival on Sunday 10th April, so we do hope to see a lot of U7s attending.

The children benefit hugely from the experience, both educationally and socially and we feel certain that the Adventure Choice programme which we have chosen this year will prove to be both enjoyable and very worthwhile whilst building on team skills.

Aside from Holt there were some brilliant results at the local festivals including, Thurrock, Essex Cup and Chelmsford. Well done to all the players that took part lets see the same again this season.

You will soon see posters advertising our winter ball which this year will be held at Three Rivers. The reason for the change of venue is the ever increasing size of the club and we have outgrown Forrester Park. The ball will be held on Saturday 22nd January 2011. If you have any queries about the ball or auction prizes please see Gill Turner at the club on Sunday mornings.

Can I also remind you that Val cooks a mean fried breakfast on a Sunday morning. Please see her if you wish to order a breakfast.

Also just a reminder that parents are not permitted to smoke on the pitches.

Regards,

David Scott