royston
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in all it has been a reasonable year and all
are keen to improve from this sound base.
“The successes mainly come from the
players themselves but we have a good
bunch of coaches from top to bottom and
their good organisation and motivation
clearly has a positive effect all down the
age groups.
“Youth rugby is tremendously important
to us as you can see. Many of the current
1st XV began with the Club in the minis
and faced with higher ranked clubs at
levels 4 and 5 all around our drawing
area we have to be pretty proactive in
recruiting, especially as most local schools
find competitive rugby in the older age
groups difficult to sustain. However
we support the North Herts Sports
Partnership in running tournaments for
local schools up to about year 6 and these
are tremendously successful and a source
of players for us.
“We are most definitely a Community
Club. Our sponsors are all local and we
work hard at supporting the local schools.
We need to do much more in this area and
hope to resurrect our schools competition
for years 7-11.
“We have some amazing players in the
Junior ranks and when they reach 14 not
a few go on to represent Cambridgeshire
and a smaller number Hertfordshire in
their junior squads. Next year’s Club
Captain is Ben Ritsema, and he and his
twin Dan, are two very exciting players
who deserve having the County look at
them. The difficulty is telling them apart
as they are identical twins!
“The challenges we face are very much
linked to the Club’s ambitions. We hope
to move up the leagues a level or two
over the next five years but this is always
affected by our player pool. Many of the
very promising young ones now attend
university so their availability is severely
restricted and then they move away with
their careers.
“Faced with Letchworth, Bishops
Stortford, Hertford, Cambridge, Shelford
and Huntingdon surrounding Royston
within about 20 miles, good players
moving into the district have a huge
amount of choice of standard and facilities
available to them. On the Junior side we
have to work hard to increase the size of
each age group squad so we can fill in the
age gaps we have and play at every age
level.
“We have to, therefore, work hard to
raise money to improve our facilities for
training and playing but in the main the
greatest attractions have to be the general
sociability of our membership, the team
cohesion and enjoyment the players get
and the outlook of our grounds which
some consider the best in the East.”
“The successes mainly come
from the players themselves
but we have a good bunch
of coaches from top to
bottom.”
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