I’d like to start by thanking the clubs board of directors, General Management Committee and most importantly all our volunteers for all their hard work during last season.

Big thanks go in particular to Anisha, who has done a great job in her first term as chair of the youth section, Tom Codd as treasurer with far too much work to do, and Mike for the enormous amount of time and effort he has put into the club.

As Mike said, it was a difficult year for the club following on from the unfounded complaints by an ex - club member to the RFU against the club and a number of individual officers of the club and the unnecessary issues we experienced as a result. This ended up taking a great deal of the personal time of a number of the clubs officials and deflected our efforts away from the club and more particularly rugby, which is what we are, and should be all about.

With The Crown Estates taking back control of Home Park away from the council earlier this year, we have seen great inroads and marked improvements io the management of Home Park – the investments in pitches, a total refurbishment of the public toilets, additional secure storage space, and current works to re-establish the water pump point so we can have watering of pitches available to the club.

Club Management Structure
At the start of last season we decided to re format the management structure and set up a number of new sub groups and try and move some of the decision making further down the line closer to the hands-on volunteers and get earlier more structured decision making.

Amongst the new sub groups were Rugby to encompass all rugby, (men, women, youth, coaching), Finance, Marketing, Clubhouse or House sub - committee, which I drew the short straw and now chair.

I can talk briefly about this area with some confidence as we’ve made a great number of inroads, particularly close season.

A list of tasks to be completed and skills required to carry out these improvements and related costs was prepared by Roly Snooks following discussions with myself and a number of other key club members. This gave us our starting point to commence works.

This list included the redecoration of 3 of the main changing rooms including new lighting, redecorating the players corridor, repairs to the bar area floor, polish and seal bar area floor, new electrics in the patio area, additional power points within the club, new lighting in kitchen, testing for legionnaires, professional clean of kitchen extractor and venting, testing and re appraisal of aircon/heating units, additional kitchen equipment, lockable units for storing hazardous chemicals, adapting TV’s to show kitchen menus, matchday information, review of existing service providers and more.

Some of this work has been completed, the remainder is on-going and we will continue to introduce all of these improvements by the end of the year if not before.

Sponsorship
A demanding year again as it becomes more and more difficult to attract new sponsorship. We do have the benefit of retaining 2 of our largest sponsors, Savills and Grundons for the coming season and several other smaller sponsors, plus a substantial new sponsorship arranged through John Thomson and Andy Bailes.

We are working hard at getting additional sponsorship. Mike has done a lot of work on this and we have appointed, Rosie, who is also a physio at the club, to look at this and she is currently talking to local businesses and Companies to try and secure additional sponsorship.

League lunches
League lunches proved a big success during the season, on a number of occasions over 80 attending the pre match meal which is a big thanks to Tony our chef and the kitchen staff and of cause Jen managing the bar area.

Events
We have also seen an increase in use of the club for external private and members events, especially in the close season which has pushed up our bar sales and income. Many thanks to Jen for driving this on any occasion she can.

International Tickets
Whilst we have enjoyed a regular allocation of tickets for Twickenham matches over the past two years, The RFU have recently re assessed the allocation of the number of tickets available to each club - I’m pleased to report that whilst I was expecting the RFU to continue to claw back seats for corporate and business use, we have been given roughly the same allocation over the next 2 years losing just 2 seats per match which is much better than I expected.

Just to finish on a on a sad note
I’d like to mention and recognise the passing of a number of club members, past and present during the last season:-

Firstly Steve Cullen. Last September. Many years on the WRFC committee, skills in marketing, advertising, Steve went on to become president of Berks before coming back to Windsor as a regular lunch and match attendee – son James 1st team player.

Also Scott Davies, brother of Tom Davies youth coach, who played from U15's into Colts and a few years in the old Jesters

We also recently learnt of the passing of Dianne Deeley, wife of Bob Deeley, (past Chairman). She was very active within the club, particularly at mini and junior level.

That’s it from me.

Thank you.

Ian Potter
President