Rugby Club Issue 89 | Page 17

Cardiff Saracens We welcome new players of all abilities and support local charities with a few fundraising events. One of the players has even started working on his own community radio production called ‘Joey Talk Talk’, which we expect to be lined up by producers in the near future! RC: What do you believe could be some of the biggest challenges the club may face in the coming years? RJ: Getting Sid to understand how to use the team app is an accomplishment that I feel will take many years! Grass roots rugby can be fragile, and we’re by no means immune. If a couple of props decide to retire, suddenly we can’t field a team, so we need to keep recruiting new players. It’s getting harder and harder to keep people motivated to lace up their boots on a Saturday, but we’re lucky that we’re a growing club and have a great appetite from the players. It’s even more challenging off the field, the club is so reliant on a small number of individuals who put in the hours to keep the club going, particularly between the committee and the coaches. Without them, I don’t quite know how we’d survive! RC: What are the club’s ambitions for the next five years? RJ: Well actually, we very much deal in rolling three year plans at the Sarries. Probably get promoted, then relegated, then promoted again or something! Also, it’s a firm ambition of the club to get Bryn and Will on tour, but perhaps that’s unrealistic! I’m not sure we have the infrastructure to get too ambitious and fly through the leagues. We don’t have our own pitch or our own clubhouse (though the Crofts do a great job in hosting us after games), we don’t have a youth setup and we have no intention of paying players. So given the lack of resources, I think our ambitions have to be to get a strong player base who enjoy being competitive on the pitch and like a good craic off it, as well as continuing to provide stability in the way the club is run. www.rugbyclubmag.com 17