Sherborne RFC

Full name	Sherborne Rugby Football Club
Union	Dorset & Wilts RFU
Nickname(s)	The Dorset All-Blacks
Founded	1980 (1980) (Founder: Tom Kelly)
Location	Sherborne, Dorset, England
Region	South West
Ground(s)	Gainsborough Park, Terrace Playing Fields
League(s)	Regional 2 South West
2022–23	11th
1st kit 2nd kit
Official website
www.sherbornerugby.co.uk

Sherborne Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club in Dorset in the south west of England. The club was established in 1980. It has a membership of 100 senior players and a further 300 boys and girls in the junior section.^[1] The club runs two men's teams with the 1st XV currently playing in Regional 2 South West – a league at level 6 of the English rugby union system – following their promotion as champions of Southern Counties South at the end of the 2018–19 season.

Ground and location

The clubhouse and grounds are located at the Terrace Playing Fields. The Terraces are an artificially created area of flat land made just before the start of the Second World War by levelling part of the valley sides on the southern boundary of the town.

In the club's first season they were allocated one pitch by the town council, located at the most exposed, western, corner of the ground. The clubhouse was the cricket clubhouse and so unused during the rugby season; a small wooden clapboard construction consisting of little more than a bar and small kitchen. As the membership and playing level of the club increased over the first few seasons, so the number of pitches being marked was increased and their location less remote. The clubhouse was also demolished and rebuilt in brick; a much more substantial construction including a much larger bar area, more substantial kitchen and storage rooms as well as four team changing-rooms, two referees' changing rooms and showers. Initially the bar area was to be divided in two, a main bar and a smaller committee and vice-presidents' bar. The wall had been built during the day before an evening team practice session and when the players found out about it they entered the construction site and pushed the wall down while the cement was still wet. They did not want the club to change from the small player-centred club that it was to a club where the Establishment with little real interest in rugby could network.

Since then another 8-changing-room facility, the Gainsborough Pavilion, was erected in 1999 next-door on the site of the former Sherborne Football clubhouse. These changing-rooms and showers are sometimes used by the rugby club, particularly when there are several teams playing at home on the same weekend.

Gainsborough Park is the rugby team's new two-pitch playing area on the south-eastern side of the Terrace car park, so called because it is on Gainsborough Hill. It was created as part of a deal between the Town Council, the Sherborne Castle Estates and the town – due in large part to the pressure applied by a group known as Save Foster's Field. The nine-acre playing fields of the former Foster's School were slated to be sold to a developer to construct houses. As the last remaining playing fields within the town this caused a furore amongst Sherborne residents and the problem persisted for nine years and directly influencing a change in the law. In 2002, after pressure from Sherborne residents, the then Secretary of State for Education, Charles Clarke, changed the rules such that first use of any money from the sale of a school playing field must be re-invested in improvements of outdoor facilities nearby. As a result, the sale of Foster's Field for an estimated £4 million meant that Sherborne Town Council were able to spend £1 million on the creation of Gainsborough Park from a piece of farmland owned by the Sherborne Castle Estates. In 2011, as the final part of this deal, floodlights were installed on the main pitch at Gainsborough Park.

The club has outgrown its current limited facilities and plans are in the pipeline to build a new club house closer to the new pitches and incorporating greater changing and support facilities.

History

Following a couple of fortuitous meetings and discussions in The Digby Tap Public House, a group of players were put together by Alan Fall, Doug Hamilton and Tom Kelly in the second half of the 1979–80 season to play some friendly fixtures against the second or third teams of local sides, always playing away from home (as there was no home pitch) and wearing an assortment of mismatched jerseys. As a result of a determined effort by these three men, by the beginning of the 1980–81 season the club was fully functioning with a committee, complete fixture list, a home pitch on the Terrace Playing Fields, the use of Sherborne Cricket Club's clubhouse (on the site of the current Terrace Clubhouse) and a set of shirts complete with club emblem.

After various suggestions and discussions revolving around a multi-coloured set of shirts to reflect the disparate jerseys of their first unofficial matches the previous year, a playing kit of entirely black shirts, shorts and socks was chosen by the club members. This was in recognition of Charles John Monro who was believed to have been a Sherborne schoolboy who had introduced rugby to New Zealand^[2] in 1870. In addition, the New Zealand national team had recently had tours to the UK in 1978, 1979 and 1980 winning 34 of 36 games and the Sherborne players wanted to emulate their style of play and this success. Unfortunately for Sherborne, although Monro had taken the game to New Zealand, he was never at school in the town; he had actually been a pupil at Christ's College in Finchley near London.^[3] Remarkably, Sherborne does have a real connection with New Zealand rugby, the man who gave the Bledisloe Cup to be competed for between the national teams of Australia and New Zealand had been a boy at the School, Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe!^[4]

By the end of the first season the fledgling club had won their division and were promoted. In the first eleven years of the club, Sherborne won their division five times, became runners-up four time, were promoted six times and were never relegated. The local press began referring to them as the Dorset All-Blacks. Players joined from a radius of 30 miles or more. The club put out a second XV for the first time in the 1981–82 season, they had a colts side in the 1983–84 season, then a third XV in 1985–86 and a fourth XV (nicknamed the Mooseheads) in 1986–87. At about the same time the junior section of the club was established with mini-rugby sessions being run on Sunday mornings.

The club achieved its zenith in its 13th and 14th seasons (1992–94), playing in South West One (the fifth level in the English rugby union system), playing against such clubs as Cinderford RFC, Henley RFC (then being coached by Clive Woodward), Maidenhead RFC and Salisbury RFC. Between 1993 and 1998 the club were relegated five times in five years back to the division they had occupied in their second season of existence. Since then the club has achieved an equilibrium in the seventh division of English rugby.

Community links

The club has many close links with local community most notably The Gryphon School, Sherborne School and Sherborne Girls School.

Tours

Club playing achievements

Club honours (trophies)

1st team:

• Dorset & Wilts 3 Merit League champions: 1980–81
• Dorset & Wilts 2 Merit League champions: 1982–83
• Dorset & Wilts 1 Merit League champions: 1985–86
• Dorset Sevens winners (2): 1986–87, 1987–88
• Bristol Sevens winners: 1986–87
• Bass Star Cup winners (3): 1987–88, 1988–89, 1989–90
• Granville Sevens winners: 1990–91
• Southern Counties South champions (2): 1990–91, 2018–19^{[lower-alpha 1]}
• Dorset & Wilts Cup winners: 1993–94
• Dorset & Wilts Division II champions: 1998–99
• Dorset & Wilts Division I champions: 1999–00
• Dorset & Wilts 2 champions: 2001–02
• Dorset & Wilts 1 champions (2): 1989–90, 2003–04

2nd team:

• Dorset & Wilts 2nd XV's Cup winners: 1994–95
• Dorset & Wilts 2 South champions (2): 2007–08, 2017–18
• Dorset & Wilts Vase: 2009-10

Youth

• U18s Dorset & Wilts League champions: 2009–10
• U18s Dorset & Wilts Cup winners (4): 2009–10, 2010–11, 2011–12, 2013-14

Representative honours

Club honours board (players)

Notes

References

50°56′26″N 2°30′40″W / 50.940501°N 2.511077°W / 50.940501; -2.511077