We’re excited to announce that Erdington Rugby Club has been shortlisted for the Gallagher’s Rugby Club of the Season Award!
As a finalist, our club will receive a skills-sharpening training session from Premiership rugby players at Wasps RFC, Gilbert training equipment worth up to £1,000 and an off-pitch business consultancy session.
The overall winner will be chosen through a combination of panelist judging and a week-long public vote, which is set to run from Monday, May 25.
The winner will then be revealed at the Gallagher Premiership Rugby ‘End of Season’ awards in London on 10 June 2020, where representatives of all the finalist clubs will be gathered.
The judging panel were impressed by our passion, community spirit and resilience, including our ability to rebuild from the ground up following an arson attack on our playing grounds in 2003.
Andy Trueman, our community officer, said: “We’re overjoyed to be one of the top six clubs in the country.
“When we lost our clubhouse to arson we struggled to recover, so we had no choice but to close the club.
“We’re thankful to have such a tenacious community in Erdington and, with some help, we were able to re-open our doors in 2017.
“We’ve been rapidly growing since and now have strong youth section and a senior men’s team.
“Our club has seen major overall growth and is bucking the regional and national trend for grassroots clubs.”
Last year, the we launched our Changing Lives Through Rugby community project, which aims to use the disciplines of rugby to tackle the growing knife-crime epidemic.
The project has been endorsed by Birmingham Erdington MP, Jack Dromey, West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street and West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, David Jamieson.
Andy added: “Last year, our committee started to notice the positive impact rugby was having in the local community.
“We’ve always had the view that the sport’s unique qualities could help improve society as a whole, and we’ve had reported improvement from schools since we launched the project.”
