A presidents days at any rugby club should be an enjoyable event, the rugby should be played with spirit and determination and the celebrations that follow should be grand. With their kind invitation Keyworth are certainly providing us with both and I would to thank them in advance for their kind hospitality. We also need to thank Keyworth for preparing Tony Gee for his 3 years in our 1st XV he has being a huge part of our campaign and our performance on Sunday is as much for him as it is our own pride. Trentham have finished on a high with our second promotion in a row and it will be good to finish with a win against an unknown club in front of a bumper crowd.
The old fashion way of celebrating rugby has being quickly forgotten, the singing, the swapping of ties and shirts, and the drinking games were all part of our Saturday afternoons and evenings, I am looking forward to rekindling that on Sunday and I am sure that the Keyworth members and visitors will join us in honour of their President Jo Wolanin.

There is a 55 seat coach leaving on Sunday 27th at 11am, everbody is welcome, lets make an effort to have a good Trentham Rugby Club day out, and an ever bigger effort to support Tony.

Thanks again, Trentham Skipper Steve Dono.

Players,

With a comfortable win against Home Chapel and a great performance against a strong Stafford side, promotion is only an eight game ladder that we need to climb gents. I continue to study our opponents on a weekly basis, but do so with confidence and not thoughts of how will we beat them but who shall I play to keep things fair and how much will we beat them by.

I can feel the same determination and pride as last year as we approached the end of the season and we need to keep that going, Our experience throughout the side supports great talent and confidence from our youth, the second XV are producing some great players who are continually knocking on the 1st team changing room looking for a shirt. For the 1st time in a long time some of you should start to feel the heat of other players wanting to compete for your position.
There are two reasons why we are not already top of the league the 1st being a shocking number of injuries at the start of the season and I am please to say that apart from myself all players have returned. The 2nd reason is training, I tried to increase the numbers early in the season and at times we have shown willing, we need to concentrate now on turning up and putting the effort in, our sessions are being shadowed by a 30 strong Hanford squad every Thursday, if they had had the facilities and opportunities that we have had, their commitment would carry them along way.

WE ARE going up again and you can all make the journey easier if you train at least 1 night per week, Ben is doing a great job and his sessions will become even more enjoyable if we get the numbers, lets get away from this shitty standard of rugby and start to enjoy some quality every Saturday.

Be with me boys be Trentham your captain – Steve Dono

I would like to give a huge thank you to all of the people involved in the organisation of a great tens tournament, despite the terrible weather it was a really good day out. Trentham may not have collected any silver but there was some great talent on the pitch in green and white hoops.

Trentham started with a comfortable win against Handford in the 1st 20, it took us a little while to settle in but we soon started to cross the line and finished with a 17 – 0 defeat, after a long wait we were then up against Port Sunlight, now I’ve played these a number of times in the league and they are starting attract some new talent I must say. Pushing the individuals aside it was a exciting contest, with true grit, determination and a good game plan Trentham showed that they can compete against any side, unfortunately 2 disallowed tries and 1 too many mistakes denied us a victory, 21 – 19 the final score pushing Trentham A into the Plate. Our next game against leek was just a warm up to the final with a 4 or 5 try clean slate mullering from Trentham, the final against the president select 10 was a different game thought, two teams of old friends and teams mates fought courageously to a 7 – 5 score to the boys in pink. Trentham struck first with a team push over try starting from a lineout but unfortunately we couldn’t find the posts with the kick, the Pres 10 slotted their try under the posts giving them the 2 point advantage.

As a club we have trained hard pre season and all of our hard work is starting to show, It was impressive to see how players from both of the Trentham sides young and old have started to improve their game, I have no doubt in my mind that we will do well this year and that we will start to see some new faces in the 1st team squad.

Its all about the league now (and the grass) our 1st game is against Eagle away and we need to be prepared, training is going well but we need to see more commitment from those of you who have struggled pre season, training as a side/squad is the only thing we lack and if we can improve on this we will climb up the league table quite quickly. Only you the players can control our success this year lads, please commit to at least one session a week so that we can structure a good coaching session around the numbers, email or call me with your availability – stevejdono77@hotmail.com / 07870568575.

Be Trentham Your Captain Steve Dono

Dear Member

I’ve have being part of trentham rugby club for pretty much all of my life and at the age of 29 it has being a pleasure and a goal of mine to captain the 1 st 1XV, with a massive amount of work from the development committee we now have fantastic facilities and I am excited about continuing the role for the next season.

We have had a fantastic year with a strong effort in the tens, promotion in the league, we were unlucky in the national cup and we reached the final of the Owen cup. Big thanks go to Martin Almond, Simon Hawe, and Sean Kave for developing strong young talent that are more that capable of competing for the 1 st XV. I would like to thank Neil Phillips for is efforts over the year, his knowledge of the game and his ability to mould the team against each side has kept us at the top of the league, he has been a good partner to have in running the side. My biggest thanks go to the players without their determination and commitment over the past 9 months we would not have achieved anything, we are fielding a regular squad of 18/20 players and we’ve developed a style of rugby that has proved very comfortable and effective.

Moving Forward my aim this year is to concentrate on the training, we have proved that when we train as a team we can adapt to compete against any side. The effort should not come from the captains and vice captains alone but from all involved I want to introduce a 2 phone call policy, basically if your coming training ring 2 of your mates and convince at least one of them to join you we now have great facilities and we need to use them to our advantage, we ended 2 nd in the league and we have not trained as a side for pretty much the whole season, image what we could do if we did. Training has started on a Wednesday night 7pm till 8pm with a light game of touch, we will move to twice a week from Tuesday 3 rd of July 7.30pm – 9pm and Thursday 5 th July 7.30pm – 9.00pm Lets have a massive season lads and lets put Trentham on the map.

Be Trentham

Your Captain

Raffle tickets for the RFU Grand Draw are available to sell to your friends, family, work colleagues or anyone else you can persuade!! We currently have 1000 tickets but I'm sure we can sell more (we sold 500 last year with very little effort). The tickets are £1 each and the club receives 90% of all ticket monies sold. Please do your best.

Ashbourne, Congleton, Leek, Uttoxetor, Newcastle, Eccelshall, Wittington,
Hanford and Linley.

A bouncy castle, children's entertainment and refreshments will be
available throughout the day to encourage a fun family day out.

Despite the interview with the sentinel on my 25 years of 1st team rugby at Trentham and a few slip ups from the Newcastle Lads at Alan Moore's farewell game I really did not have a clue about what had been organised on Saturday. I got my kit ready as normal and was oblivious on my way down to the club commenting that "I really wasn't up for this game against Bloxwich". I arrived at the club and started to see faces who would not normally be there and it started to dawn on me, finally hitting home when I walked into the bar to a tremendous cheer. I was absolutely dumbfounded and looking around saw some faces that I had not seen for a long time. Players I had played with in the colts and not seen for years, players f rom opposition sides that I had battled with for years, and players from more recent times who had moved away or abroad.

The game was played in a friendly but serious vane and thankfully everyone, even us older more frail players, came through it relatively unscathed. I have to apologise for my moaning during the game but the second period was just a little bit too fast and hectic for us oldies on such a warm day with the sun in our faces. The oldies managed a come back in the third period which cheered everyone up and nearly put a smile on even my face.

The post match celebrations were tremendous and I thank you for the wonderful gifts and mementoes to remind me of the day. I apologise for not mentioning a few people in my short response to Malcolm's kind words but as you could see emotion got the better of me, it's the Eastern European in me. Festivities continued late into the night and I, after being dragged up to Newcastle kicking and screaming and force fed Brandy, bowed out gracefully at around 10.30 to remain horizontal until being dragged to the Mainwaring at 2 o'clock on the Sunday to reminisce on the day.

So thanks to everyone, The current Trentham players, the ex-trentham players, the Players from other clubs, all the friends and relations, and all those who must have put such a lot of work into organising the event. You all know who you  are and I wouldn't want to miss anyone in a list of names.

So thank you all for making it such a great day and making an old rugby player very happy!!!