The Leamington New Zealand Club are here this week as part of their tour in support of the All Blacks. They are at the Ricoh today and in Leamington tonight and depart north on Thursday. They have certainly brought the weather with them. An excellent group of characters – the party is only 21 strong but they managed to put out a side against us on Tuesday night and came out on top by 17-14 in a full on and open game with both sides scoring two tries. Photos on the website. Thanks to the under 9’s for doing a great job as the guard of honour.
The nightmare scenario of the Group of Death became real on Saturday as England crashed out to the Aussies. At least it will provide the sports columnists with endless opportunity to debate what went wrong, who was to blame, who should have been picked, whether the management should be changed and so on. What we haven’t seen anyone pick up on is the worrying trend in our performance over the last four tournaments – winners – finalists – quarter finalist – group stage losers. Hope we don’t have to pre-qualify for the next one!
Meanwhile the show will go on, but who will we support now – Scotland, Ireland, Wales? …..New Zealand, Australia – Japan!! One person supporting OZ, is ex- junior player Alan Rowland who it was nice to see at the club on Saturday, despite his gold shirt. Now a naturalised Aussie he is here for the tournament and to look up old friends. He was one of the stars of the Guinness Record breaking mini and junior side in the 1980s and scored a club record 59 tries in 1981-82 . if you want to read the story of his team it is on the club website (Information – History of LRFC – Guinness World Record Breakers).
There was no first team game last week but the Seconds had another win in a several times replaced fixture against Southam and the Spartans in their first outing of the season stormed to a fifty point success against an Old Coventrians/Kenilworth combo. Good to see Gavin Grant back and scoring two tries.
This week the Firsts are at Spartans at Sutton Coldfield. They were formed in 1960 and we first played them in 1984-85 in the early rounds of the Warwickshire Cup and won comfortably. Since then we have met on 6 occasions in the league – winning both times in our 2009 promotion season but losing 3 out of 4 in the past two seasons. They have beaten Barkers Butts and Earlsdon since losing narrowly to leaders Banbury in the opening game, so it looks like a being a good game to win. The Seconds are away at Berkswell and the Spartans game is not yet confirmed but hopefully will be at home. All kick offs are at 3.00 till November
The application form for Six Nations tickets got missed off the email last week so it is attached to the email this week. Applications have to be in by 1 December.
Social media - for all members who are into their tweets, likes and hashtags etc then the club can be found at Leamington RFC on Facebook and @LeamingtonRFC on Twitter.

Last week, due to the mysteries of cyberspace, the Leamington RFC facebook page disappeared so it has been hastily re-created by Dean Harris. Dean has worked tirelessly this week to get followers to the Facebook page. It is an essential means of communication so we need to build it back to the levels we were. Please follow us!
The club website is www.pitchero.com/clubs/leamington which has all the news, match reports, photos and events
Finally, to offset some of the gloom of the past few days/week, be it sporting, meteorological, political or just life, best joke I've heard in a while. Will give credit for it to Derren Nisbet, aka The Cumbrian Comic, a sell out in Ulverston on a Wednesday night in February by all accounts. - "Taught my dog to play the trumpet on the Underground. We went from Barking to Tooting in an hour"
Enjoy the rest of the World Cup!!

Phil and John