Rugby

What a fantastic season.  We did lose Fred; but what we went on to collect saw the club at heights never ever seen before.  After an extremely well played season, our Premier Development Men won the top spot in their grade bringing home the George Nicholson Trophy.  Then, we did it – we marched to Eden Park and won the Gallaher Shield for the first time and it only took 99 years! Tracking back a little earlier, the end of 2020 saw our U85s Lizards winning a national title, the NZ Barbarian Under 85kg Club Cup in its inaugural season after a nail biting final at Eden Park.  Following on from that our Men’s 7s team won the 2020 Auckland Club 7s title as well.

Our Senior club managed to field 7 Senior teams this year and our Junior club had 28 teams running around on Friday nights and Saturday mornings.  The number of Junior teams registered was slightly up from 25 Junior teams last year.  Great growth was seen with the female registration numbers with just under a quarter of our 400+ Junior registrations belonging to females.  As we head into 2022 as a training venue for Women’s Rugby World Cup, this is especially exciting and relevant for the club.  Unfortunately, with the season being cut short due to Covid restrictions, the Junior club were unable to hold an in-person prize giving, instead holding a great online prize giving, celebrating not only all the Junior players, coaches and managers who won awards but all Junior players for being a part of one of our Junior teams.  The Senior club were lucky to have a fantastic prize giving organised by Morganne who did a terrific job.  There has been plenty of photographic/video evidence of all the rugby magic created during 2021 season across our Facebook pages and Instagram.

I would like to thank all of the coaches, managers and volunteers; for their commitment to the club and their players. It has been great seeing all of the teams this year.

Rugby has now finished for the season. Unfortunately, due to Covid, the 2021 off-season competitions have all been abandoned for Auckland.  This includes the National Barbarian Club Cup competition that our 85s were meant to have been playing now, defending their title; as well as the 7s season.  This is very sad for the Men’s, Women’s and 21s teams we would have had competing in the Auckland competition.

Operations & Finance

2021 has been a better year financially with most of the Senior games and functions going ahead.  We were lucky to receive some funding from the North & South Trust and other grants that made a big difference to managing the running costs of the Club.  Now that the club is not open we are still having to cover our costs.  We have claimed resurgence funding to help with expenses, and the wage subsidy for our bar and admin staff, which will help them get through the lockdown and we will continue applying for this while it is available.  The club ended the year in a healthy position, as you can see from the accounts.  This is testament to Alicia and Warrick running a tight ship and controlling our finances efficiently.

Time is precious and all of our volunteers give a lot of their time. We employed a club operations and development manager early in the season.  Although this person did not last the whole season we did get some great ideas and we are still using all of the foundations that were created to take the club forward.  To help the club, Alicia stepped into this role at short notice and continued to keep things moving in the right direction. We would like to thank her for this.

A big thank you also to Paul and Matthew Saggers for running the tuck shop.  Not only was this was where you could get the best chips in town, they also moved a whole lot of merchandise out the door which was great for the Club.  Unfortunately, this was their last season, so we are looking for someone to take it on.  Please let me know if you are interested.

Executive Committee

A big thanks goes to the committee members for all their time, which in most cases is not seen by the rest of the membership.  They all put a lot of time in every season, and particularly this season, to get rugby going and keep it going.

Warrick Nansett has stepped down from the Committee. Thank you Warrick for all of your help and your passion for the club over the years, we look forward to seeing you on the side-line supporting Eden.

2019/20 Executive Committee members:

President: Junior Williams

Chairman: Phil Cullen

Treasurer: Warrick Nansett

Secretary: Alicia Kerr

Club Captain: Shared through the Committee

COD Delegate: Paul Saggers

Junior Club Captain: Peter Sisam

Junior Delegate: Lennox Sam

Rugby Chairman: Paul Bateman

Morganne Sale

Mark Friedericksen

Karl Rosnell

If you are interested in helping out please come and talk with me. You do not need to commit to being on the Committee, we have many opportunities to help outside of the Committee.

The Future

Looking forward next season, we will be defending the Gallaher Shield and I am hopeful we will get a full season of rugby.  I encourage all our members to remain ambitious, to set goals that force us outside of our comfort zone for solutions, and execute strategies for long term sustainability in order to continue pushing Eden Rugby to be the best place in Auckland to play and be involved with rugby.

In 2022 we will be celebrating the Eden Centenary and we want to ensure between now and then that Eden continues to challenge the traditional order of Auckland Rugby clubs.

Phil Cullen

Chairman Eden Rugby Club

Article added: Wednesday 17 November 2021