Rugby Club Issue 52 | Page 31

st ives Come and visit our brewery at our new home. Trenwith Burrows, St Ives, TR26 1GD. Our cafe and gift shop houses some of the finest Cornish produce along with our well known beers and merchandise. peruse further education in different areas of the country. The fact is that this has had a huge impact on our first team setup and having to travel on one occasion this season with 14 players, then ending up with 12 due to injuries. In fairness to the players that are still turning out they’ve kept a more positive attitude than you’d expect them to.” Youth “The youth section at the club is quite a success, fielding eight age groups up to under 16s and most ages are well supported. Next season our under 16’s group will be restarting in the colts section. This we feel can only be good for us and for a small club like ours it is a huge achievement and is the main way to getting the senior part of the club back on its feet. We are under no illusion as to how important the youth section is for the future survival of the club.” Facilities “Off the field we are experiencing various challenges with trying to keep the old building in service. We’ve looked at various schemes in the past and are currently perusing one that would hopefully see our current clubhouse facility be replaced with a new one. This isn’t the first time in the last 10 years that this has been a possibility and unfortunately this has led to maintenance being kept to a minimum. Nearly all the maintenance on the club house is carried out by volunteers and more often than not the materials are being donated as well. The clubhouse, although dated, still proves to be playing a big part in the community, with weddings, birthdays etc. being held at the club as well as a slimming club and Zumba classes. We also have rented part of the club out to the local boxing club and a gymnasium, so the place is fairly well used by the community.” Ambitions “Our plan for this season, as far as senior rugby goes, is to purely fulfil all our fixtures and try to stay afloat in the league we are currently in. We can then hopefully start rebuilding for next season to put us in a stronger position and re-start our second team fixtures. The junior section, hopefully, will be nurtured in to the colts section once again to help bring through new players for the senior section. Our long term business plans would be to rebuild the club house from scratch and cut our liabilities, overheads and burdens to a minimum. This in the future would hopefully then put more of an emphasis on the rugby rather than on keeping the place financially afloat!” www.pitchero.com/clubs/stivesrugbyfootballclub - Twitter : @StIvesRugby www.sportip.biz 31