EDF Energy and Wooden Spoon TAG Rugby Festival

Avonmouth RFC are proud to be staging Bristol Rugby’s EDF Energy and Wooden Spoon TAG rugby festivals at the end of this upcoming term. On the morning of Monday 15^th December 2008, Avonmouth RFC will host 10 local primary schools who will have participated in either the EDF Energy tag rugby programme or the Wooden Spoon TRY Rugby programme with the winners of each festival qualifying for the ‘Champion of Champions’ playoff at the Memorial stadium later this season. All support is welcome with the rugby starting at 10am for around two hours.

OLD PLAYERS’ REUNION

This will take place on Saturday 21^st February when we take on Walcott in South West 2. There will be a 3 course lunch starting at 12.30pm with the bar open from 12 noon. Once again a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and share happy memories over a beer and a bite to eat. To book your place please let Doug Moore, Malcolm Leyshon or Steve Leyshon have your name. Cost £15 per head with bottle of wine on the table!

General Meeting

Sun 23rd November 2008 - 2:00pm
Steve Leyshon will be holding an open forum where there will be discussion about some of the plans for the club and ways in which we can look at increasing our profile in the local community and also raise our sponsorship income. All members welcome

National Smelting Co Boxing Club

Bristol’s National Smelting Co Amateur Boxing Club known as the Smelters have been very busy over the closed season with their new build gym.

The new gym and fitness facility at the Avonmouth Rugby Club site is a Sport England and the local community foundation Quartet funded project and is backed by the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABAe). Informed head coach Garry Cave “After many years of trying to raise funds for a much needed new gym we where very fortunate to receive Sport England backing of some £68,000. Local foundation Quartet has also backed our project with funding for new boxing and weights equipment. So when it’s built it will be all kited out with the latest equipment, two new boxing rings, punch bags and weights. Avonmouth Rugby Club have been very good neighbours to us allowing us to link our new building to their club house so we can use all the showers, changing and toilets.

We’ve seen a massive rise in the interest in Amateur Boxing, possibly due to the Olympic bounce. We had a smelters boxer Nicky Wiltshire medal in Moscow and it would be a marvoulous achievement if we could produce another.

Our Gym at Avonmouth is absolutely packed out and we’ve had to try and move some beginners to the two other boxing gyms we run at Southmead Youth Centre and our new gym at Patchway Sports Centre. We have had some fantastic help from parents of boxers in getting this far, one of the Dads Mark Shackell provided free labour from his company over two weekends to help us erect our new building and without his support it would have cost us a small fortune to get done. Many of the boxers and their Dads have lent a hand and it’s all down to this great team spirit we’ve got this far so quickly. We’re hoping we can have the new gym open for the New Year so we can continue to increase our membership and offer the chance to participate in amateur boxing to local youths.

We’re also looking fwd to a very busy season with 20 competitive boxers all ready and raring to go, most have been training very hard in the gym over the summer to get ready.

We’re hoping to build and the success of last year where we had four regional junior champs in John McDonagh, Tyler Davies, Tom Connors & Nathan Snow and won many bouts, we went ten bouts unbeaten at the start of last season and all at away shows and finished off with ten wins from eleven in the last two of weeks.

You can catch the Smelters in action at their first home show on Thursday the 16^th of October at the Pill memorial club, 1 Lodway, Pill BS20 0DH, tickets are available from the Pill Club priced at £10 adult and £5 junior or from the NSC by phone 07876 233621 - click here for poster.