Could you be our Team of the Month? If your team enjoyed success in November then send in your nomination – it's open to every amateur rugby side in the world
Here’s your chance to be named Rugby World Team of the Month
The Rugby World Team of the Month award predates rugby’s professional era and although its parameters have changed down the years, its essential ethos has not.
It’s open to any amateur club, anywhere in the world, and the successful team will adorn the cover of our grass-roots rugby section under the experienced editorship of Michael Austin.
Our first winners of the 2019-20 season are Glossop, a Derbyshire club revived by members of the local mountain rescue team in the 1960s and now celebrating their 50th anniversary.
“There’s been lots of events and there’s a buzz around the club,” says director of rugby John Openshaw. “We’ve pushed the sponsors and there’s much more awareness around the town of the rugby club and that’s put a lot of energy into the lads as well.
“We’ve got a 50th anniversary first-team shirt and for the first time ever a proper away strip. We’ve also spent something like £15,000 on our pitches and it’s improved the drainage beyond recognition.”
Glossop sit third in North Two West, with a game in hand over the two clubs above them. They are fresh off an exhilarating 35-32 away win over second-placed Manchester.
So, could you follow in Glossop’s footsteps by winning our next award? Naturally, we’re looking for successful results on the field but even here there is a rider, because for some sides faced with adversity just fulfilling a fixture might be a triumph in itself.
There is no single template for winners; the team that struggles on when it seems they must fold, or creates a charitable legacy from tragic circumstances, is every bit as worthy as the team that imperiously sweeps aside all opponents.
RC Delft Dames are one team that ‘did it tough’, being one of our winners in the 2011-12 season. Read about them here.
Our winners last season included the likes of Kidderminster Carolians, RGS Newcastle, Lurgan U20 in County Armagh and Bury Foxes, a women’s team from Suffolk.
Proactive approach: Royal Wootton Bassett claimed our January 2018 award (Nick Phipps Photography)
School teams are eligible, with George Watson’s College in Edinburgh one of our former winners after some blistering Christmas-term form by their U18s.
Ally Donaldson, their coach, told us then: “We’ve had some really good teams and quite a few guys go on to play professional rugby. But in ten years here as director of rugby this is the hardest-working team I’ve had, on and off the pitch.”
Glossop are our latest winners and we’re now seeking our next Rugby World Team of the Month. So if you think your side has stood out in some way, email your results from November 2019 to alan.pearey@ti-media.com and tell us why we should make you our next winner. Please include a high-res photo(s), whether a team shot or match action or both.
The winning team will appear in the next issue of Rugby World.
Space invader: Kidderminster Carolians No 8 Jess Smith sees a gap against Earlsdon (Paul Hickey)