NPR

It will be close to a year soon since junior clubs have been allowed to play rugby or make any money from the club bar.

How is your club getting by without any income?

Has the club done any fundraising?

Have requested donation pleas been successful?

How long left until it simply can't go on any longer?

My old one down south seems to be doing OK. They even offered to return some subs because of the new lockdown, although they didn't mean it of course.

After a few months of full lockdown, we’re allowed groups of 8 for training and max 50 at the facility at any one time.
Zero inter club or inter school comps though for over a year now.

Strangely numbers are stable - lost quite a few expats choosing to go home but topped up with kids who just want some kind of activity/ sport to play. Yet to see how many we keep if and everything opens up again.

Financially ok for the same reason - plenty of other groups like touch, even ultimate frisbee and stuff wanting to rent the facility during non training periods.

Different situation here obviously.

For the time being we are alive.
Junior section (kids) is ok they can train but can't play and miss the tackling.

Ladies team in it's second year played once or twice only and I believe were still training untill the last restriction (they actually received their Jerseys recently however no games in sight)

Senior side is still training numbers still high. This is surprising as any other year at this time I'd be making the numbers...

Money wise we are ok as a lot of this year sponsors money is unused ... last year we had a small surplus due to travel expenses not actually spent.
Buses are our biggest outgoing post so with no games we are ok.

Next year is going to be sink or swim depending on whether we can keep the players motivated (ladies could be hard) kids may get another free pass to help.

This all depends if we can actually play in september...

Club's in an ok position looking at the last set of accounts published in January
We opened the bar all last summer and were clearing £6-£700 a month profit whiach covered our fixed costs each month There's been little or no pushback on playing and VP subs as the vast majority are paid on standing order and members have been happy to pay up.
The only person we pay is the Clubhouse Manager and he is part time and on reduced hours and his costs would usually be covered by the profits made from clubhouse rental and events
I work on the sponsorship side and we managed to bring in £30k plus season 2019/20! We made a concious decision to regularly keep in contact and update all existing and potential sponsors this season and won't be far off that figure again.......without a match being played!
We haven't touched our "Bounce Back" loan and are unlikely to do so but at the same time have been succesful in a number of local grant applications.
The one area that we do worry about is player drift in all sections. We've tried to keep communications on social media at a high level and keep folk interested. We'll have to wait and see how succesful that has been
Looking forward to that first pint of cold Guinness this season........ big time

Club is still doing reasonably well financially. Did well in selling face masks, got some lottery money, collected full subs etc.

Seniors not allowed to train, except in groups of max. 2 players, socially distanced. So you see some of them dragging gym equipment outside to train a bit. Funnily enough, willingness to help out with kiddie training from the senior section is at an all-time high...

Kids are allowed to train but no matches other than amongst each other. We are lucky in that we can field two XVs (and multiple 10s/8s etc. at U12 and below) at all age group levels so we've had Saturday morning matches pretty much every week for everyone. It's not ideal as the range of skill goes from national squad players to new arrivals, but it's been better than I feared to be honest.

We have some hope of playing other clubs again in tournament format or as friendly games maybe by the end of May or early June. But that's very much a best case scenario.

As if Covid wasn't enough.

Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

There is already a major vaccination center in your area at Harlow Leisurezone. The owner of the company my daughter works for was sent there instead of the closer ones in Stevenage and Welwyn GC
I think they are all run by The Hertfordshire NHS Community Trust. Could be worth contacting them

SaintK wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:44 am

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

There is already a major vaccination center in your area at Harlow Leisurezone. The owner of the company my daughter works for was sent there instead of the closer ones in Stevenage and Welwyn GC
I think they are all run by The Hertfordshire NHS Community Trust. Could be worth contacting them

I live nearer Saffron Walden now so not sure on what's what in Harlow. I do know that the Leisurezone building is only about 500m from the new clubhouse though which might work against it. Financially, the club is really up shit creek from what I can surmise.

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:52 am

SaintK wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:44 am

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

There is already a major vaccination center in your area at Harlow Leisurezone. The owner of the company my daughter works for was sent there instead of the closer ones in Stevenage and Welwyn GC
I think they are all run by The Hertfordshire NHS Community Trust. Could be worth contacting them

I live nearer Saffron Walden now so not sure on what's what in Harlow. I do know that the Leisurezone building is only about 500m from the new clubhouse though which might work against it. Financially, the club is really up shit creek from what I can surmise.

Ahh, very nice around Saffron Walden!
Yes being that close to the Leisurezone would probably discount that option
Fingers crossed for the club. I'm assuming that they've applied for all the grants, long term loans and business reliefs etc that are available?

SaintK wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 11:07 am Ahh, very nice around Saffron Walden!
Yes being that close to the Leisurezone would probably discount that option
Fingers crossed for the club. I'm assuming that they've applied for all the grants, long term loans and business reliefs etc that are available?

You'd hope so but it's not the most dynamic or creative group in charge. But then again, like most clubs, it's all about volunteers.

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

Not rugby but my cricket club was approached. Were offered £60k for 6 months, process went nowhere until the army got involved and then it became a Go/No Go that day. Ended up turning it down as we couldn't guarantee them unfettered access through the summer of course.

Rugby wise my club (still a member but haven't played for a few years/won't play going forward) seems OK financially but is getting increasingly concerned about players losing interest. Old boys have been dropping like flies as well.

Paddington Bear wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 11:13 pm

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

Not rugby but my cricket club was approached. Were offered £60k for 6 months, process went nowhere until the army got involved and then it became a Go/No Go that day. Ended up turning it down as we couldn't guarantee them unfettered access through the summer of course.

Rugby wise my club (still a member but haven't played for a few years/won't play going forward) seems OK financially but is getting increasingly concerned about players losing interest. Old boys have been dropping like flies as well.

If the NHS offered to hire our place for 10k a month, we'd probably throw in free beer and pies!

Kawazaki wrote: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:18 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 11:13 pm

Kawazaki wrote: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:05 am Have any rugby clubs been used as NHS vaccination centres?

Anyone know the process about how that works (and what fee the NHS pay to hire the facility?!)

Not rugby but my cricket club was approached. Were offered £60k for 6 months, process went nowhere until the army got involved and then it became a Go/No Go that day. Ended up turning it down as we couldn't guarantee them unfettered access through the summer of course.

Rugby wise my club (still a member but haven't played for a few years/won't play going forward) seems OK financially but is getting increasingly concerned about players losing interest. Old boys have been dropping like flies as well.

If the NHS offered to hire our place for 10k a month, we'd probably throw in free beer and pies!

It was 6 months or nothing and would have meant we couldn’t play this summer. Tough decision still as the club has significant debts to repay but it was the right call