Chiswick Rugby Club celebrates growing membership, new teams and new facilities

International women’s rugby pioneer Alice D Cooper, with Lucy (L) and Hannah (R), from Kings College London Women’s team

Exhibition match at Chiswick Rugby Club celebrates the success of women’s rugby

Chiswick Rugby Club held its first women’s match on Saturday (11 October), a milestone which has been a long time coming.

The club does not yet have its own women’s team, but after many years of working towards this goal, it opened new changing rooms this summer: six changing rooms in all, so it is able to offer men’s and women’s facilities for a home and an away side at the same time, and two children’s changing rooms.

Alice, having just kicked off the match

Women’s international rugby pioneer Alice D Cooper kicked off the match

The match on Saturday was between two university teams: Kings College London (KCL) and Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ medics (GKT). KLC were playing in Chiswick Rugby Club colours for the occasion, and the match was kicked off by Alice D Cooper, “rugby royalty”, as the RFU’s Immediate Past President Rob Udwin put it.

Alice, who lives in Chiswick, is a pioneer of women’s rugby – one of the four women who set up the first Women’s Rugby World Cup’. She received recognition from the rugby establishment when she was inducted into the Rugby Hall of Fame in 2022.

READ ALSO: Chiswick resident Alice D. Cooper talks of the “enormous honour” of being inducted into Rugby Hall of Fame

She was also recognised by Hannah and Lucy, two of the KCL players.

“It’s really lovely that they know who I am”, she told me. “I didn’t expect that”.

Thanks to the success of international women’s rugby, and England’s Red Roses winning the World Cup at Twickenham last month, she has been all over the media talking about it.

Eleanor Grant, from the London Marathon Foundation, beside the new changing rooms

New changing rooms

The new changing rooms, in use for the past three months, were paid for in part by the London Marathon Foundation, who put in £100,000. The decision was made pre-Covid, but like everything else the pandemic slowed it down. The rest of the money came from fundraising within the community.

Eleanor Grant, representing the Foundation, told The Chiswick Calendar:

“It’s great to see this project happen after so many years of working on it. Girls especially tend to stop playing sport around the age of 11 and don’t come back to it, so this was an opportunity to encourage women & girls especially”.

Eleanor herself is not one of those girls who dropped out of sport at 11. She is an ultra marathon runner.

Lunch underneath the new awning for outside events

The development of the club is “stunning”, says Rob Udwin, former President of the RFU

The celebrations on Saturday marked more than the first women’s match and the opening of the changing rooms. A three-course lunch under the awning put up just two months ago, and the speeches afterwards were to celebrate how much the club has developed over the past two years.

Rob Udwin

“It is stunning”, Rob Udwin told me. “When you compare it with what we used to have – a wooden shack and a muddy pitch. The change is incredible”.

Rob has been associated with Chiswick Rugby Club since 1986, initially as a player in the senior team before becoming a committee member and going on to higher office in the RFU.

The land in Dukes Meadows was first leased to the club by Hounslow Council in 1962 and in 2018 the lease was renewed for another 50 years.

It was part of former Leader Steve Curran’s master plan for Dukes Meadows that the RFU should fund an all-weather pitch, as a basis for revitalising the club, but when Covid struck a whole generation of players retired prematurely and the club struggled, along with every other amateur rugby club.

READ ALSO: Chiswick Rugby Club new all-weather pitch

READ ALSO: Chiswick Rugby Club is recruiting

Andrew Lee

They made a bold decision to change the club’s structure completely, bringing in a management team of four rather than a committee, the club’s Head of facilities and sporting development, Andrew Lee told me, “so things actually got done, rather than just being talked about”.

Building a club with a sustainable future

The new management team decided to turn the club from the traditional amateur rugby club model run by volunteers and reliant on donations and grants, to one that was financially self-sustaining with a business model that would underpin the club’s future.

They cleared the site of rubbish and replaced the broken-down fencing, put up new gates (though these are never closed, said Andrew, because the land is Metropolitan Open Land and the public have a right of access).

Eating and drinking in the autumn sunshine at the rugby club’s new outside event space

The club put up the new awning and opened a coffee bar, so members of the public with no connection to rugby are welcome to wander in for a drink, from the coffee cart or the bar, when they are just out for a stroll in Dukes Meadows.

They have also promoted children’s rugby through the minis, mixed gender teams who train on Sunday mornings. Membership of the club has grown by 30 – 40% over the past year, driven by the growth in their children’s and youth teams: up by 60% since September last year.

Grand Opening support staff

Investing in youth

As well as the minis (4-11) they now have junior teams, (Under 12s to Under 16s), and have revived the Colts team this year (under 17s and Under 18s) for the first time in 30 years.

They are proud to announce their first under 12 girls team this season. Captain Sophia Ball cut the ribbon to declare the new changing rooms open, alongside the club’s oldest serving member Brian Martin. Sophia has been playing rugby since she was six years old. She also plays netball and football and practices Karate, and she told me what it is that she likes about rugby:

“I like that you connect with friends, unlike [activities] online. I like being with people and think it builds your confidence. There are lots of girls interested in playing rugby”.

Eleanor Grant and Brian Martin with Sophia Ball cutting the ribbon to declare the changing rooms open

Reintroducing rugby to the curriculum at Chiswick School

Sophia is a student at Chiswick School where, in collaboration with Chiswick Rugby Club, rugby has been reintroduced to the curriculum, bringing the history of the school and the club full circle, as it was Chiswick boys, ‘Old Meadownians’ who first established the club. Chiswick Rugby Club is now providing the school with coaching.

“It’s rare for a state school to teach rugby”, the club’s Head of youth development Gauthier de Beer told me. “The school’s Head of Sport is a rugby man, but he didn’t have the teachers with rugby qualifications, so we provide the coaching”.

It is proving very popular, with girls as well as boys, and just as they hope their new Under 12s Girls will grow up to become Chiswick RC Ladies, they have a canny eye to the future, by encouraging continuity between children playing at the school then joining the club.

Starting with Year 7 last year, coaches from Chiswick Rugby Club are now coaching Years 7 and 8, and next year it will be Years 7, 8 and 9. They also provide coaching for an after-school rugby club.

Alice only started playing as an adult, as there was not the opportunity to play when she was a girl:

“I feel quite jealous”, she told me. “How lucky are they?”

She will be coaching the girls’ team this season.

Enjoying the celebration lunch

Playing the long game

As with Chiswick School, the club is hoping the relationship with KCL will be long and fruitful: that by hosting university teams, the players will continue to play at the club once they leave university.

KCL are one of eight outside clubs who use the ground regularly, including the Blue Moon Football Academy children’s football club, two rugby league teams: the London Chargers and Hammersmith Hills Hoists and the West London Wildcats Australian Football League team.

Chiswick Rugby Club also hosted a day of the International Gay Rugby (IGR) tournament in August. The club offers touch rugby as an additional option for women and children on Thursday evenings.

(L) Andrew collecting his award at the LooseHeadz ceremony in Covent Garden last week; (C) changing rooms and car park; (R) Andy Slaughter MP for Hammersmith & Chiswick with Rob Udwin at the ribbon cutting

Tackling mental health issues

Another important revenue stream for the club is catering for children’s parties at the adjacent laser tag place Adrenalin Rush, and as a result of all the new money coming in they have set up a Wellbeing fund, and offer assisted places (“offered unequivocally, without a conversation if parents say they need it”, says Andrew Lee), and some full scholarships (which do require a conversation).

Andrew won an award last week from the LooseHeadz mental health charity for ‘rugbyness’ – ie. embodying the culture of rugby, for tackling the stigma of mental health in rugby.

They cleared the site of rubbish to smarten up the appearance of the club and make it more welcoming for players and visitors

Plans for developing the club into a multisport centre

The club is buzzing with activity and there are more plans afoot to continue the transformation from a traditional rugby club to a multisport centre, beyond touch rugby and even Aussie rules football to Padel tennis.

“It’s important to have individual sport here as well as team sport. We want to encourage sport seven days a week. With all the parents here on a Sunday morning it’s easy to imagine them playing Padel. We just want people to engage and have fun”, Andrew told me.

There is currently a mound of earth between the rugby club and the hockey club, created by the installation of the artificial pitch (cheaper to leave it there than to remove it), which is where they plan to put five Padel courts and a cafe. They have put in a planning application and are expecting to hear the result in the next couple of weeks.

“A growing and very important part of the community” in Chiswick

“If the club stays on its current trajectory, it will be a growing and very important part of the community”, said Rob Unwin. Introducing the women’s match he said:

“This is a really important time for women’s rugby, and the club needs to tap into the growth of women’s rugby. It is a testament to the vision and hard work of the team – Andrew Lee, Mike George, Ray Theakston and Trevor Smith – that they are building a successful future.

Fittingly King’s College Women’s team won their match, as did Chiswick 1st XV men’s team, who also played on Saturday afternoon, beating visiting team Finchley 31-24.

Kings College Women’s rugby team with Alice D Cooper

CRFC XV celebrating their win against Finchley

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