Dear Sevenoaks RFC members
With this coming weekend seeing the final fixtures of the first half of our centenary season and the final ones of 2025 it feels a good time to reflect on what we’ve achieved as a club, what we are working on and what we can look forward to.
Our flagship senior XVs have had a very encouraging first half of the season. The men’s 1st XV under the expert guidance of the Director of Rugby Adam Bowman and his talented coaching team have found some real form in the last month of National League 2 fixtures leaving us 11th in the table with a mouthwatering home game to come on Saturday against Canterbury. Home grown talent Ben Adams sits proudly at the top of the National League scoring charts and recent academy graduate Jacob Ivell is our leading try scorer. Our women’s 1st XV promoted into NC2 South East had an excellent win against Beccehamians on Sunday pushing them up to 3rd in the league, under the guidance of Grant Scandling and Kelly Downey they continue to go from strength to strength.
The men’s senior squad continue to have unequalled numbers at training every week, regularly topping over 60. Our 2nd XV sit just below the promotion places at level 7 competing almost exclusively against other Kent 1st XVs. The 3rd XV sit second in their Kent League again competing against many 1st and 2nd XVs.
The women’s 2nds are competing in their RFU Inner Warrior League (for new starters to the game) for the first time and are proving to be very competitive again backed by record numbers at weekly training.
The academy, under new head coach Howard Packman and manager Mark Reay, are really finding their feet under this new leadership, training on Wednesdays and Sundays, regularly seeing 60+ attending with this number expected to be significantly higher in the New Year as school rugby drops off and the Kent academy league really gets into full flow. I’m personally really looking forward to seeing this group develop and eventually step up to our senior squads helping us to continue our stated aim and to maintain our current situation of having at least 50% of our senior squads coming up through the academy.
Finally on the playing front this Sunday sees the last training and matches of 2025 for our mini and juniors, who along with their volunteer coaches and managers etc are the life blood of Sevenoaks RFC. They continue to come through our pathway to represent our senior men’s and women’s teams imbued by their coaches and managers with that unique Sevenoaks rugby spirit and camaraderie that allows us to keep achieving outstanding results and producing outstanding women and men.
Off the field your committee are working very hard to make sure we are providing the best possible rugby experience for our members in a financially challenging environment. We are actively working with Sevenoaks Town Council (our landlords) to improve the standards of our pitches at the Paddock both in the short and long term, seeking grant funding from the RFU to be able to better drain and seed all of our pitches. We expect the council to upgrade and replace the floodlights on the cabbage patch in the new year and are actively participating in the STC local plan to ensure local sports facilities are included, upgraded or funding is provided via section 106 of the community infrastructure levy. We recently announced that in conjunction with our sponsor Fusion for Business we have secured a new energy provider from 2026 that will save us £10k a year against our current budget and is secured for three years. Great news and a meaningful contribution to the clubs financial bottom line.
We are striving to prioritise our rugby provision, pitches, facilities and overall member experience, however this all comes at an ever increasing cost. As an example, are you aware the cost of providing pitches for training and playing across the whole club has increased from c£25k 5 years ago to c£65k last season. We have seen a similar increase in the cost of our medical provision (which we see as an essential). We need everyone’s help if we are to continue to maintain and hopefully improve on what we deliver for our players from minis to seniors and to our wider membership.
You can help in many ways by supporting the initiatives and events we are promoting. If you’ve been around the club over the last few weeks you will have seen the great work Steve Brook is doing reinvigorating and promoting our club Lotto (https://sevenoaksrugby.com/lottery). You may also have seen the Centenary Fund Tree on the wall of the clubhouse, the aim of the fund to make sure we can continue to fund our 4G training pitches, our medical team and our community rugby and coach development programmes. We have currently raised around £40k and need to reach at least £75k to maintain our current programmes and more if we want to improve on them (https://sevenoaksrugby.com/centenary-fund).
Please do support our events, we had over 300 at our fabulous Centenary Ball in September, this Saturday's Xmas lunch is set to be a 150 person sell out with carols to follow post game. In the second half of the season we have our former players centenary lunch (https://sevenoaksrugby.com/1st-xv-vs-london-welsh) , following last years successes we will go again with our city lunch (https://sevenoaksrugby.com/centenary-city-lunch-2026) , golf day (https://sevenoaksrugby.com/centenary-golf-day-2026) and a new addition to the calendar a clay shoot day. The more these events are supported, the more fun we have and you are helping the club provide the best possible rugby experience we can.
Most of all, I hope you will come down to the Paddock on Saturdays and Sundays, support our senior, junior and mini, men, women, girls and boys in their endeavours and enjoy the rugby and camaraderie that only a community rugby club like ours can produce.
For those that can’t make it to the Paddock this Saturday or Sunday, I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. To the rest of you I look forward to seeing you for one final weekend of 2025 down at the Paddock in fine voice and festive spirit
COYO
Nick Thompson