Good evening my little chickens and welcome to the new season of “Woz Ons” or more importantly welcome to the 142nd season of rugby in Honiton… that’s a long time to be running a rugby side in a town of this size and as always, it’s a big hand to all who have supported, played, coached, volunteered or sponsored the Ton over the years, “every little helps” as a well know supermarket said.

I fear that in these times, it is a lot more complicated running clubs as volunteers and I’m sure our committee members will concur with this statement. It is hard to just keep our heads above water but somehow we’re still going and hopefully we’ll continue for many more years…unashamedly I’ll give a plug to anyone who would like to sponsor the club in any way and if you can’t part with spondoolicks , volunteering goes down well and you can join our merry band. Just let me know and we’ll find you a job to suit your skills.

So on to the Woz on info, it’s been a while…..

Obviously the end of the season didn’t end well as we had that arson attack and despite our own detective work and giving the culprits names to the Police on a plate, as far as we can see, nothing has been done to deal with them properly and we’ve not even received an update from the Police and that’s despite me asking for one… Don’t think it’s much to ask for an apology from the person or maybe getting them to do some sort of community service?… Anyway…. we’ve collected around £500 from the fundraiser, thanks to all that donated and managed to put in an insurance claim and yes, this now means our premiums are sky high from now on… We have temporarily managed to fixed the fence and big thanks to Paul Coates for organising that. Our Junior Chair Stuart Perry, Chris Baily, Conrad Libischer, Adam Smith and an army of boys cleared up the mess and sorted out the front container which was basically full of junk and somehow we are some way to being back on track. We’ve still got meetings with the council about sorting out the fencing proper proper and cutting the trees back. It’s all on their land and they also own the fence.

Now….on to the big summer project… the flood lights and the stage one of the drainage project it’s all been completed! I will say a big thanks to the council who granted our bid to access some 106 money to get it done and without this, the whole project would have been a none starter given the cost. Yesterday Paz sent a picture of the lights actually turned on and working which means we are good to go. Big thanks to him and his firm Alan Manchip for connecting everything up and big thanks also to DSL Ltd for putting up the lights.

Then there was the drainage project which was also done in double quick time. Unfortunately for all of us we bumped into the dryest summer on record so to be fair, we have had run into problems getting the seed to germinate which is no one’s fault but a real pain in the Kyber all round. It’s not for want of trying and big thanks has to go to our watering teams who have all spent a merry few (actually many hours) trying to keep seedlings alive.

You know who you are as do I, so take a pat on the back from us all. When it got really desperate we even got Bill Baily to help out with some unmentionable assistance.

Rob Summers is coming down to do some fertilizer spraying which we hope will help and this very expensive product was kindly donated to us by his mate. Rob’s not answering his phone so I can’t get his details or the company name to do a big shout out. I’ll do it next week.

… fingers crossed we are going to be up and running by mid-October so I’m sorry to say we will be playing our opening games on the top pitch and we’ve also avoided double home games for a month or so.

Thanks to Paul Coates and Josh Rice form Ultimate8 Construction and Ultimate8 projects their guys did all the ground works. Hopefully when everything settles down we will reap the benefits of all this summer turmoil with dry pitches and lights to train under. Hurrah I say.

Thanks also goes to Stuart Selway and Finn Lowman for all their work they did sprucing up the front of the club house.

Then there’s a big thanks to Pete Burrows who has single handedly sorted out the two new (well…second hand) dug outs we got from Taunton school and to be fair they look the dogs…. They’ve got Taunton school on one of the panels on the side, Chris is going to ask them if they now want to sponsor them! Just joshin.

Others are doing other jobs to get ready for the start of the season and when I remember what else is being done I’ll give ‘em a shout out on this platform.

Now some sad news…. one of our ex-players who played for the Ton in the late sixties and early seventies Arthur Tyrrell has sadly passed away after a good innings. Condolences to all his family and on talking about him with one of my “older” golfing chums he remembered him well and informed me that he was a half useful boxer in his day and could have gone professional if anyone knows about this let me know, it’s a good story.

Ok rugby this season…. As is always the case we’ve lost a couple to high league clubs but there’s not much we can do about this and ones gone to wrestle lions in Africa. So a few lighter but we still have a good core and we will just have to “p with the c we have” if you know what I mean… Jonny is continuing as the captain which is three in a row now which I think hasn’t been done before.

So to start proceeding we are playing Sidmouth in a trial game this Friday night down at Blackmoore ground, ko is at 6.30 and you are all welcome to come on down and watch and have a pint. We are also playing for the Dave Turner memorial cup as we always do when we play the Mouse. Dave played for both clubs back in his day so hence the cup which was donated by his family.

Things start proper proper on the 6th September when we entertain Bideford who are an unknow entity as they got relegated last season… they won’t like that as I always felt they look down their noses at us back in the old days and we were never worthy of a fixture… how times change.

Anyway enough….

#UTT

Lord Jez