June Onside Rugby Club Spotlight
We continue our monthly rugby club spotlight with this absolute cracker. We've chosen to highlight Cambuslang Rugby Club for June. After speaking to some of the parents of the players who have attended our sessions, it is clear to see that Cambuslang have their players and their community at heart.
We caught up with Stewart Barnett, Head of Junior Rugby for Cambuslang, read below to hear more about their wonderful story.
Club Name: Cambuslang Rugby Club
Year Founded: 1903
Since its formation in 1903, Cambuslang Rugby Club has been at the very heart of our local community within Cambuslang and Rutherglen. Our mission is to be recognised as one of Scotland leading community clubs whilst continuing to deliver a fully inclusive programme of rugby, with no barriers to enjoying the sport, our club and our wonderful facility.
We are particularly delighted and proud with the growing numbers over the past 10 years within our junior section, where we continue to attract new talent and retain members year on year. We now proudly stand with around 250 junior members enjoying the wonderful sport of rugby who are supported through an exceptionally hardworking and dedicated coaching team of around 40 coaches underpinned by an equally hard working committee creating an amazing environment for everyone to enjoy.
The club is delighted to able to cater for all age groups from 5 years old to those old enough to know better!!
We have mixed girls and boys teams at Micro and Mini level (P1- P7).
We’re delighted to also cater for a newly formed and growing wonderful girls section, this is for S1 and above.
We also have a strong midi rugby structure in place right across all high school age group for boys. This caters for the S1 age group (U13’s) right up to our Under 18’s team who will be developing and preparing for life into senior rugby.
Our senior section are also able to operate two teams, with our 1st XV at centre stage. Our 2nd XV when able to, enjoy playing friendly fixtures with likeminded teams in body, spirits and ability. Of course like rugby right across the world, everyone also enjoys socialising after the games, whilst replaying every wonderful move, every missed tackle, and every lost opportunity to score due to poor refereeing decisions!
Like many organisations, volunteers are the life blood of our club, who without them we would not be able to operate. Our coaching team and committee work so hard to ensure we are able to offer a wonderful facility, have a development programme through all the age groups for all our young rugby stars. There are no financial incentives for our coaching team and everyone does it for the benefit of others. We will support any of our volunteers through funding qualifications in coaching, refereeing, first aid, mental health and wellbeing. Feedback suggests that our volunteers get lots of value back personally from their efforts, evident through a growing coaching team and most remaining as part of the coaching team and club for a significant number of years! We also like to recognise efforts of our volunteers by nominating them through externally recognition schemes as Scottish Rugby community awards, Cambuslang and Rutherglen community awards, and Glasgow Warriors awards. We have seen much success over the past few years with David Boan, Sandy Huchinson, Jim McGhee, James Brown, David Henderson, John McLaughlin all recognised in the wider rugby community for their talents and dedication to their sport.
Since 2018, during the Summer months we have delivered an exciting programme of touch rugby to our community. The series of ‘Family Fun Friday’ evenings bring together existing members of all ages with an influx of new interested members of the community keen to keep active and learn more about what the Club has to offer. With the support of the weather, we have worked together with our sporting partners in previous years to offer a variety of exercise and activity to our local community. During our last Summer of Family Fun Friday’s we regularly welcomed over 100 participants to the Club from the local Community to take up our offer of keeping active during the Summer months. We aim to bring this back again in 2021 within a covid safe environment, and hope to see more of our community come along and enjoy the facility.
Throughout 2020 whilst restrictions, as a result of Covid meant our practical sessions were restricted, we formed a health and wellbeing initiative, which focused on joy, contentment and optimism for our members and families.
We adapted all rugby sessions to deliver fitness sessions to our age groups in a virtual environment, sustaining engagement and focusing on health for everyone at the club and their families.
We arranged a fantastic virtual sponsored event designed to support both our local food bank, and the wonderful Doddie Weir Foundation. A target of 10,000Km was shared between all the members who individually or as a family went out walking, running or cycling to help deliver the target. Underpinning this was creating a sense of "being together" virtually for the greater good, however also building on health, wellbeing, and fitness. We managed to come together to raise over £4000.00 which made everyone feel great and of course brought joy to those who needed it most!
We ran a wonderful winter Christmas Gift appeal, where our members came together and helped us collect and distribute over 400 presents into the Cambuslang community through our charity partner Healthy and Happy.
We ran a community foodbank appeal into the New Year though our 1st XV team, which delivered a wonderful amount of essentials to help those families in our community.
Lastly our Junior Section collected over 400 chocolate Easter eggs and passed them to our local food bank to help those in our community enjoy Easter that little bit more!
We continue to be extremely proud of our club and how we support the local Community
Cambuslang Rugby Club recognizes the role that we can play in delivering, developing and growing the sporting offering in our community. As such, we are active members of the Cambuslang and Rutherglen Sports Council which aims to promote sport and participation throughout the local community. We observe the common workstreams and focus that our current activity has with the Sport Scotland Community Sports Hub programme. We continue to be open to explore how best to use the Rugby Club as a Hub to deliver health and wellness messaging as well as practical sessions with our partners for the benefit of those within our community.
We know it’s a special place to be which is optimised by six of the current coaching team still together having played mini rugby in the very same Under 9 group over 36 years ago!
Our training sessions take place, in season,
U18’s
Thursday 19.00pm
Saturday
Midi
Tuesday 18.00pm
Sunday 11.00am
Mini
Wednesday 18.00pm
Sunday 13.00pm
Micro
Sunday 13.15pm
If anyone wants to get involved then please drop us a note a cambuslangrugbyclubjuniors@gmail.com or DM us via our Facebook page.