Breaking away slightly from the monthly newsletter but as time is tight for at least one of these announcements so here is a mid-month mini newsletter.

1) ENGLAND V TONGA SATURDAY NOVEMBER 6.

One of our sponsors has been kind enough to donate four tickets (all together) plus a car park space in the Cardinal Vaughn car park for the England v Tonga game. We are going to raffle off this fantastic prize and tickets will be on sale at £5 a strip. Tickets will be available from tomorrow at the main bar and additionally at weekends in the mini caravan or The Scrum Shed as it is now known as.

The winner will be drawn at the pre match lunch on October 30 when we host the Leicester Lions.

So please buy your tickets now and someone will be going to Twickenham with three others for £5, cant be bad??

2) Referees. As usual we are short of qualified referees. Essex RFU are paying the fees for anyone wishing to attend the upcoming referee courses. If you are already a qualified referee and you are happy to ref either our senior men on Saturday afternoons (that will be mainly the Stags & Rams), our Vixens mainly on a Friday night or one of our youth teams on a Sunday (could be am or pm) then we will pay you £30 for helping us out.

If you are prepared to help us out as a qualified ref then please contact mrenshaw1@sky.com for the senior men, klegrice@icloud.com for youth and Krissie.thomson360@gmail.com for the Vixens.

3) Dog poo. Now we have a lot of fencing it is more difficult for non members to get onto the pitches to walk their dogs, but some still manage it. So either they (most likely) or you if you own a dog and walk it at the club (most unlikely) are allowing dogs to poo on the pitches. If you do walk your dog at the club and you do not clear up after it, please do so from now on

4) COVID.

Just as we thought things were getting better they are getting a little worse. We know we now have to learn to live with it but we also need to take precautions. I got contacted by the Track & Trace people as it was me who set up the QR codes for our club. They told me they had been contacted numerous times about people testing positive who last visited the club last Wednesday. At least one of the mini’s has tested positive on Sunday.

There has been a major outbreak of people testing positive from last Saturday, especially those attending the pre match lunch.
I have been talking to the Track & Trace people and they have told me that,

• We can stay open & continue using the clubhouse just as we are doing now and receive visitors
• Our staff do not need to isolate, but all staff who were working over the weekend or last Wednesday should be taking the rapid lateral flow tests even if they have no symptoms and have been vaccinated.

Despite the weather all windows and doors in the clubhouse will remain open when we are there.

I am asking that all people now attending the club use the QR codes as we did previously
and these will all be put back up on the walls. Hand sanitisers will also be more common
throughout the clubhouse. If you do not want to use a QR code to sign in then you will be asked to manually sign in. We all have to do our bit.

That’s it for now.

Thanks

Ray