Friday last week I travelled up to Bristol to have a game of golf with a few chums, all going well and all set to play to my handicap as I reached the eighteenth tee. Great Rory drive down the middle and this was followed by a half decent second shot which ended up just short of the green, I set off after it and my phone rings… I ignored it but it rings again and again and again so I thought after four calls I better answer it as something must be up!. It was my brother in law who said that his wife, who was at the swimming pool had rung him to say you ought to let Jeremy know that round the back of the rugby club was on fire and the fire brigade were there trying to put it out. What! I then duffed my chip and missed the putt which meant I didn’t get my par but frankly this was because I wasn’t concentrating given the news.
I got on the blower to Stopper and Gordon and asked if they could go down to sus things out and as reinforcements, I phone Steve Smart to see if he could muster some troops to also go down. Calls back n forth from everyone and good news the fire was out and the club house was safe!
Once again the perpetrators had broken in round the back and prised open the metal container which had all our storage stuff in it ! It was completely gutted, three of the large trees were badly burnt and the whole of the large wooden fence was now completely gone.
On the way back to Honiton, I’d established that the Police didn’t attend as they didn’t have anyone available..(really). This meant I had to report it to get a crime number… Detective Stopper Todd had managed to get a young lad to say he knew who’d done it and so we had names. I gave the Police all the info and went down to survey the damage. I took a video which I imaging most of you have seen. So upsetting especially as this is now the second time this has happened.
Oh! At the same time all of this was happening, I’m told the top Pavillion changing rooms were broken in to at some stage during the week and someone had kindly smashed off all the light sockets!! Another crime number!
I spoke to the police in the morning and sent over a couple of the videos and the info Detective Stopper had found out . Not much else I could do…
Monday I rang the swimming pool manager to get his side of events and straightaway he said someone with their mother had come in and confessed they were involved together with 3 others, all were 12/13ish. He was a bit surprised that no one had contact him from the Police. So was I ! Anyway I rang the Police back gave him the info but couldn’t help wondering why they weren’t doing all this. I then get a call asking if I would do a victim/ witness statement I said I was free from three pm but they said it would be over the phone and the earliest time they could do it would be on Thursday… today!
They phoned on time and 45 minutes later, statement done. Then this afternoon I get a call back from someone else from the Police saying they have the culprit and they have fessed up and this was a call to ask us (the club) what we wanted as an outcome. Bit of a strange question and I immediately thought I don’t want to ruin someone whole life and said we are happy to forgive but I did say we as a club just didn’t want to be out of pocket and clearing up and replacing the goods was all going to cost a lot of money…Yes we are insured but claiming on it only massively puts up the next premium which as you know, as a charity organisation we can ill afford Ah! She said getting them to pay for all the damage might be difficult because of the age. I asked about parents then, why can’t they pay. She said that getting money back would only be considered if the case went to court and this might not go to court!! There was then a difficult conversation and once again it’s hard not to get cross. Why is it the victims of crime the one person that doesn’t get looked after? She said she is going to ring me back after interviews have take place but it does make me wonder, what’s the point in reporting anything or indeed actually having a criminal justice system!!

If honest I find this sort of thing quite upsetting as our simple goal/aim has always just been to provide a community venue to facilitate the playing of rugby, for both adults and especially kids. In that, there is also a lot of work done on teaching kids respect, team work and looking out for each other….all of this is done by a lot of wonderful volunteers but to enable this all to happen, we work tirelessly to get support from business, ex-players and sponsors not to make money but to just keep things going and as you know if you are a regular reader, we are always battling to keep the wolves from the doors. Somehow we are still going and over the years we’ve seen many come through the ranks and finish having those values instilled in them …. a mindless act like this cost us a lot to put right and it’s money we can ill afford and just occasionally you have to wonder what’s the point!!

Anyway…. Sunday comes we’ve tidied up and put the set back behind us and we’re back on the horse with lots of positive rugby stuff …. Youngsters running about playing rugby. The 14’s and 15’s didn’t have a game the 13’s were under strict instructions to do the double over our illustrious neighbours Taunton and this was duly done and there’s an uplifting video of the game on the website. Then it’s well done to the under 12’s who weathered some… how can I say it, “challenging referring” but despite this we still won which is always good. The 11’s had one of their best games of the season only letting in a couple of tries and scoring plenty it was a great game to watch.
10’s did the biz as well and the 9s had a great battle and definitely held their own with Taunton bigger numbers. We’re a bit sparse on numbers in the 9s but still we’re very good.
The 7’s and 8’s had a good run around and no one worries about the score it’s fun!

There…. that cheered us up.

It’s a free Easter this weekend for both seniors and Juniors . Theres’ a club game over at Tivy on Friday night and for the Juniors there a big festival/ end of season day at Honiton on Saturday. We are welcoming Clee Hill with all teams at home everyone is invited to come down there’s going to be bouncy castles ice creams, pizzas etc and it’s also our hard working Junior chairs Stuart’s 40th. Stopper will be strumming and singing a few tunes….so come on down.

Still no news on promotion but we are now in the ¼ finals of the cup as we were given a walk over win from Sarries, not sure if we will be home or away but it’s on the 3rd of May. I’ll keep you all updated.

Sorry about the negitative b*llocks but had to be said

#UTT

Lord Jez