The School of Engineering RFC is a social rugby union team with members mainly from the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, but we always have players from all over the University as well. We play a variety of different teams around Birmingham and have members of all abilities.
As the season draws to a close it’s exciting to think how far the Club has come since September. With 70 members (the largest on record!), and over half of these being new to the sport we’ve had a good turn out all year long, even managing to field a full 25-man squad against the Medic 2nd XV in the penultimate week of semester 2! The team has played many club sides throughout the year including; Droitwich 2nd XV, Camp Hill 3rd XV and Kidderminster 4th XV. We’ve also put teams out against some other UoB teams, playing the University’s 2nd XV just before Christmas and the Medic 2nd XV twice throughout the season.
Socials this year have remained key to the Club with the most notable being the annual ‘Old Boys’ alumni game in February which brought many past members back to Birmingham to play a very muddy (why is rugby a winter sport..?) game, followed by an evening of our traditional entertainment. The annual mystery tour took us to Cardiff later in February, allowing us to sample some of the local ‘culture’. Unfortunately our game was cancelled due to water-logged pitches (again, why a winter sport?), however we did get to watch Leinster put one over on the Cardiff blues in what was a very exciting match!
Looking forward, we have the summer touch tournament hosted by the University’s Team UBRFC to prepare for during those all-important revision breaks, followed by the Club end-of-season dinner on the 2 June. As is tradition within the Club, the new committee is announced at the dinner, along with all the awards for this year. Keep your eyes peeled for the next update where we will find out who is the all-important Players’ Player for 2015/16!
As always, many thanks to the club sponsor, Interserve, and to Arcadis, Purple Frog and Studypool who helped us out with the costs of training gear this year!
As we are now officially part of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences Community we are eligible for the annual EPS Societies’ Awards. With the tremendous year we’ve had we’re hoping to get on our hands on one of the prestigious Awards on offer. If you are or have been part of Engineering Rugby RFC please nominate us for Sports Team of the Year!
Best wishes,
James Twist
Treasurer 2015-16