Hi Folks,
So what has been going on over the last week or so, last weekend saw a festival of European Rugby with 2 English teams Northampton and Harlequins making the semi finals after tremendous results against Munster and Bordeaux Begles respectively. Sadly after a very promising first half the Chiefs were outplayed by a fabulous Toulouse team who must now be favourites for the cup and of course they have that famous Englishman Jack Willis as one of their star players just a shame he can't play for England !!

I also watched a bit of the Gloucester v Ospreys game on the friday and did think my eyes were deceiving me when I saw the Honiton shirts run out of the tunnel at the start of the game, for anybody who has not seen it check out the Gloucester change strip they must have heard of our win at Twickenham and are looking for inspiration.

Onto more local things we had a sponsors and volunteers lunch at the club last saturday to coincide with our round 1 Papa Johns cup game against Bodmin who of course pulled out the week before so Churchy arranged a game against Barnstaple for our guests to watch who of course then pulled out at 10.30 on the Friday evening !!!!!! Really frustrating leaving us with no time to arrange a fixture with 40 guests expecting to come and watch a match with food bought and bar and kitchen staff in place.

Having said all that we still went ahead with the lunch so a big thank you to everyone that attended and helped us to put in on I think the sponsors and volunteers still had a very enjoyable afternoon with some highly intellectual conversation being observed.

At the lunch I did give a brief update to the people that were there on how we were progressing against our key initiatives this season just to keep people in the loop on how things are going a summary of which is below.

1) Facilities and Equipment - We have invested between £11,000 and £12,000 this year on a combination of new glass washers, commercial dish washer and kitchen security shutters plus circa £2,000 on new equipment for the Junior section following an audit at the start of the season. We still have a Cellar to insulate, CCTV to look into, Showers need a complete overhaul and the roof has sprung a leak so still much to do.
2) Playing an On field activities - Senior rugby was a season of two halves we only won two matches in the first half and only lost two matches in the second half, indeed our second half form would have seen us finish in the top 3, we also completed all of our second team fixtures so numbers look promising. The junior section continues to explode under Stuart Perry's leadership with over 250 registered players and for the first time ever 2 girls teams at under 12 and under 14. We have also invested in our Junior coaching team with an additional 4 coaches going through their RFU level 2 training.
3) Social Media and Community Engagement - We have Julian Hoyles to thank for our progress here which has been a real success story this year, we now have over 3500 followers across the social platforms, our website regularly gets in excess of 3,000 hits per month and we also often feature in the Pitchero top 100 for website traffic out of a total of 1100 clubs. We are better engaged with the local schools, we are working in partnership With the community college and in regular meeting with both Honiton Town council and EDDC. We have even had our local MP visit the club this season.
4) Big Idea's - We have now prioritised our big projects into 1) Drainage ( both pitches) 2) Pitchside fencing for both pitches 3) Solar panels 4) Floodlights and are working really hard with EDDC and HTC to try and secure some grant funding to help us kick at least 1 and 2 of these priorities off. I would like to thank Dave Vallender who has been working tirelessly in the background to help me progress these discussions.

Onto this week, we were originally playing St Just away in round 2 of the Papa Johns cup until the RFU decided we should get the fixture as a home game as we missed the Bodmin match, all good so far ! then the RFU disqualified St Just for playing an ineligible player so we are now playing Newquay Hornets away on saturday. We would really welcome any travelling supporters this is definitely a game we can win and if we do round 3 will be played at Alhallows.

On the junior front Sunday was the first week the weather finally broke our juniors were split between young ones at Sidmouth with 7s,8s,9s,10s,11s and 12s making short trip and 13s, 14s and 12s and 14s girls at Honiton.

Starting with our main event that happened on Sunday afternoon, our 12s and 14s girls cluster that Clare Norris organised produced a fantastic afternoon of girls rugby I don't think we've ever had 100 12s and 14s girls playing rugby at Allhallows at same time. We welcomed players from many clubs across Devon. Our 12s played a tough match against Brixham and our 14s linked with Topsham played 3 short games against Ivybridge, Sidmouth/Kingsbridge and a Baba's team from 5 clubs.

Big thank you to all the parents that helped to make the afternoon rum so smoothly.

The 14s hosted they're last home of the season against Bridport and produced a dominant home win! 36-0 Simon has got some growing talent here we need to look after, these are our senior players of the future. The 13s played a 5-5 draw against Sidmouth on the top pitch. We started slow but grew into the game and if it had run for another 10 mins and we would be winners.

The 12s played Sidmouth at Sidford and were convincing winners in the first game but then played Western Hornets a tour team who were small but lightning fast and learned some tough lessons ! The 11s were triumphant in both games as Dave Vallenders team was too strong and Footys 10s started off slow but finished strongly to draw against Sidmouth and beat Western Hornets. The 9s had 2 fairly comfortable games but Sidmouth ran them close and the 8s and 7s both played Sidmouth and Western Hornets too and what a difference the weather makes!!

Onto Chard this week for the younger age groups, 9s and 12s have they're end of season festivals whilst 13s travel to Bridgewater Albion the 14s have booked a 35 seater party bus for Torrington and both girls teams are travelling to Topsham

Good luck to all teams!

A couple of announcements the Junior presentation day is 12th May in the morning at the club and we would like to invite all members down to celebrate our junior season. The Senior Dinner dance is on June 21st in the evening at Cranberries in Kilmingston speak to Finn Parrett or Churchy re tickets.

None of what I have talked about in this update would be possible without the financial support of our fabulous sponsors and the time and effort of our team of volunteers so a huge thank you to everyone from me, what you do everyday makes a difference to nearly a 1,000 local people who have an interest in our club.

Jez or Lord Jez as he prefers to be known will be back from his travels next week so goodbye from me and see you all soon.

Chris
Chairman HRFC