Three years ago it became clear to your committee that with the numerical success of the mini and junior sections we needed either more pitches or to make our existing pitches more playable. By that, I mean be able to play on them more often; to cope with the demand.

Regrettably, we have been unable to acquire more land as yet, so plan B was put in train. The first thing we did was to complete the drainage work on Pitch 2 which I am sure you will agree has been a huge success with us playing significantly more games on it last year than ever before.

Going further, we obtained a £50,000 grant from Sport England towards a total cost of £60,000 to drain fully Pitch 1. With the vagaries of the British weather we decided that we also needed access to unlimited water to irrigate the pitches; hence the bore hole and sprinkler system at a further cost of £22,000.

The big lateral drains were installed at the end of May after which it stopped raining! Although we have been able to keep the new grass alive with the sprinklers we have only just been able to complete the work within the last week.

We know the drainage is working and we are confident that with some more grass growth over the next month we will be able to utilise the pitch fully over the winter. I am sorry if it seems that only the First XV are using it at present. We have just been trying to ration its use for the first couple of months of the season which will bear fruit in the long run and allow the whole club to benefit from a very major capital expenditure project."

Charles Owen-Conway,
Chairman of Rugby