The Centenary ball was a great success on Friday with nearly 350 members and friends celebrating the 100th birthday of the club. It was a huge effort and thanks to everyone who helped organise the event in such grand style, in particular Mel Greenway and her team. There are lots of photos from Ken Pinffold on the website together with the video messages received for screening at the event from England fly-half Finn Smith and former England captain and RFU President, Sir Bill Beaumont are below

Our focus now switches to the new season. The Colts played at Nuneaton Old Edwardians on Friday night ans went down by 19-41. Also that night the mini and junior section acted as Guard of Honour to Coventry RFC at their opening game against Ospreys.

This week the first XV entertain Nottingham Moderns in a trial/friendly fixture, kicking off at 3.00. The recent rain has helped to soften the pitches and reinvigorate the grass so we are hopeful the game will go ahead in some form. We are trying to get another game on 19 September and hopefully the season proper will start on 26 September with the first league game, at home to Evesham.

A reminder that Dick Ashley’s funeral will take place this Friday (11TH) The cremation service will be family and invitation only. There will then be a church service at Stoneleigh Parish Church at 12.30 followed by a reception at the Club around 1.30 to which all are invited. There is no dress code.

Graham Messenger’s funeral will be on Thursday 17 September at Oakley Wood at 11.00 and afterwards at the club

The “It’s a Knock Out” centenary event due to be held on Sunday (13th) has been cancelled due to the company working with us having to wind-up with immediate effect due sadly to the death of their owner .

The RFU have informed us of our ticket allocation for the Six Nations games. We have 28 tickets for each of the France and Scotland games and we can order as many as we want for the Italy game, subject to availability. Richard Miller is taking over the allocation and distribution of the tickets this year and an application form with all the details is attached, so get your applications in.

Our new Honorary Secretary, Richard Watkins, is taking over the editing of In-Touch from me, probably from next week. We are committed to keeping everyone informed about what is going on and we will be reviewing what we do with the links between In-Touch, our Pitchero website, What’s App and other methods of communication and how we can embrace the opportunities of AI. If you have any thought about how we might improve things, let Richard know

As mentioned, a couple of weeks ago, Bill Dalton has taken over from Phil McGaffin as Membership Secretary. The membership form and CASC form are attached. Bill’s details are on the membership form. Subs are payable from the beginning of September and we would be grateful if you would pay yours as soon as possible and if you pay by standing order, could you please check that you are playing the correct amount.

Bill is taking the opportunity to review the list of members, as we are aware that a number of people have lapsed but are still on our list. It is important that we have accurate list and Bill will be checking this out in the next few weeks, starting with the VPs and he will be writing to everyone to check out their status in order to update whether

• they still wish to be a member and if so, are they paying a fee
• if they are not a member, whether they want to be
• if they regard themselves as lapsed, whether they want to renew membership or be deleted from our list.

John Lyons, 01926 855787