News & EventsLatest NewsCalendar
 Eton Manor RFC Changing Room Extension

Eton Manor RFC Changing Room Extension

Dave Dennis21 Oct 2016 - 06:35
Share via
FacebookTwitter
https://www.etonmanorrfc.com/n

Eton Manor have a fantastic history of providing alternative life paths for many, including the disadvantaged and privlidged.

VOTE HERE

Eton Manor Boys Club was set up in 1914 by a group of Old Etonians as a sports foundation, with the objective of encouraging sports participation for the underprivileged youth in East End of London. In its heyday the club had over five thousand members participating in a wide range of sports. Unfortunately, the club ran into financial difficulties during the 1960’s, which led to the closure of the sports ground. The Eton Manor Rugby Club then led a nomadic existence, renting various council grounds throughout East London. In 1996 the club managed to purchase our current ground in Wanstead East London. In order to reduce costs, the new club house was built with only four small changing rooms as, at the time, the club only operated with three senior sides.

Since then the rugby club has re-focused on our original ethos of encouraging sports participation. Our Community Reach-Out programme has seen us grow from seventy senior members to well over five hundred plus playing members, across all age groups and both genders. With membership still growing above 10% per annum, we are forecast to have in excess of one thousand participating members within the next decade.

Whilst the rapid change in growth of the club has been hugely successful, it has left us with serious logistical problem across all playing categories:

• Senior sides ~ we now run five senior teams. It is often the case that three or four teams are assigned home matches on the same Saturday. Therefore, we have to stagger games so that the changing rooms can be used by all of the teams. Added to that, the increase in the size of rugby squad numbers over the years has caused overcrowding in our relatively small changing rooms, which no longer comply with the Rugby Football Union recommended standards.

• Youth, Junior and Mini Sides ~ with over four hundred youth playing on Sunday mornings it has become impossible to securely accommodate all of them at the same time, as we often have several teams sharing one changing room.

• Girls Sides ~ although we try to accommodate the girl’s sides wherever possible, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide them with completely separate changing room facilities. More often than not our teams and their opposition have to arrive in their kit and then, like many of the boy’s sides, travel home wearing wet and muddy kit. Also, due to the success of our girl’s teams the Essex Rugby Football Union are considering setting up a centre of excellence and hub site at our ground. This will enable other clubs with a limited number of girl players to join together to form teams and help grow the sport. This opportunity is now in jeopardy due to our lack of adequate facilities.

• Community Usage ~ we are very conscious of fulfilling our role in our local community offering a wide range of activities from Judo to Zumba classes. We do offer out the club for use to a number of local sports clubs, educational establishments, charities and business. Again we are restricted in what we can do without adequate changing and shower facilities.

The club have decided to explore the opportunity of adding further changing room capacity to meet our growing demand. In preparation we have recently self-funded the installation of our own water well, ground source heat pump and solar panels to provide sustainable heating and hot water. We have decided the best approach would be to purchase a modular pre-built changing room. This would accommodate four more teams on Saturdays and provide the girls sides with separate changing rooms for their own use when required. It will also enable us to run school festivals and offer out our facilities to potentially thousands of participants in our local community. After such large investment on sustainable energy our own financial resources are depleted. Therefore, we are making this application to enable us to continue to grow sports participation.

Vote here

Further reading