Shipston Rugby Club has always taken great pride in offering one of the best value sports and social club memberships in the area and, in addition to the ‘value for money’ offering, we also believe we have the best Coaches and a fantastic facility – for our players and social members of all ages.

A question that crops-up from time-to-time around the rugby club is: “What does my membership and, indeed, my child’s membership subscription go towards?” This is a very fair and reasonable question, and one that I will try my best to answer herein:

Back in 2000, as a result of a lot of hard work and the support of the Shipston-on-Stour and area community, the rugby club was fortunate enough to be offered a Sport England ‘Lottery’ funded grant that helped to fund the construction of the clubhouse we all enjoy today. Incidentally, invaluable though it was, the grant did not ‘fully fund’ the clubhouse project by some way. The additional funds came through a variety of means and generous donations, and “no child was sold or harmed during the building of this clubhouse!”

The clubhouse remains the envy of a great many of the opposing clubs who visit us at Mayo Road today, but it is also a facility that requires constant upkeep and, with the addition of the growing number of floodlights, is one that is increasingly challenging to operate in terms of funding.

The club also has a responsibility to its members to maintain the standard of the playing surfaces although, with the ravages of rain, wind and snow over the past couple of winters, you could be forgiven if you thought that we should be spending much more on this component. The truth is that the club spend around £8,000.00 over the course of most out of season periods adding sand and grass seed to the fields, and this current summer we have added a drain that runs down the hill the full length of the main pitch to the driveway in an attempt to alleviate the pooling of water on both the First Team and upper rugby pitches. The car park is a whole other story, of course, and the current cost to hard surface that area in Tarmac ranges between £50K-£70K.

This is not intended to be a droning list of costs that the club faces, as I’m sure that most members could stand on the main pitch and look at the facility in full swing and imagine what is necessary in terms of funding. However, it can never do any harm to reflect on what benefits you, our cherished members, get in return for your annual membership subs.

The funding balance we try to strike at SRFC is one between accepting a sensible and not too intrusive level of sponsorship from local businesses who genuinely have the club’s interests at heart, and a level of membership subscription that makes the club accessible to everyone. We also try very hard to keep the bar prices as low as possible for our members, with drinks around 15% cheaper for those presenting a ‘JBA’ Membership Card than those who do not. I myself have calculated that I’ve easily saved more than the cost of my membership fee before Bonfire Night . . . but that’s a whole other story!

That fine balance, in itself, is never an easy square to circle, but we do our very best to keep the subscription fees and the bar prices low whilst having just enough money to operate and maintain the club. Last season the club scraped over the line with a 'bare bones' profit of £27.00, the season before we lost almost £16K!

For the season 2014-15 there has been a modest increase of £5 across all membership tiers, but we have tried to soften the blow by offering a ‘two payment’ facility spread over 2-months - but only for those who pay online via the club’s new website:

http://www.pitchero.com/clubs/shipstononstourrfc/payments

Senior Players do pay quite a bit more than both Junior and Mini members, mainly because they use more lights, more hot water, more cleaning and more Stewards' time. And, although the Mini and Junior members do use the floodlights for the occasional training session and the odd floodlit fixture, the club feel the balance is just about right at this point.

A really interesting question comes in the area of ‘Social’ or ‘Non-Playing’ membership. It might be rather easy to take the view that this is nothing more than a donation to the club’s coffers, when nothing could be further from the truth. Firstly, without this valuable support the playing membership levels for Mini and Juniors would certainly have to increase. And, when you think about it, those of us who join as Non-Players get all of the benefits with none of the physical pain! A few examples below:

Discounted Bar Prices

Access to a Pool of 6 Nations Tickets and Autumn Internationals (the club has an allocation of approx. 40 tickets for every England game)

Great pitches for our children to play and train on

Use of the club’s facilities

Invitations to Great Club Evenings and Events

The opportunity to become an RFU trained coach (funded by the club)

Discounted Club Hire (for private parties and functions)

The club also underwrites the Annual Mini and Junior Tour. There was one very scary moment last season when the club was finacially exposed to the tune of £28K to the touring company!!!

The club fully appreciate that there will always be some parents of our younger players who will have no interest whatsoever in joining the club, but we are no less pleased that you still bring your children along and introduce them to the wonderful game. You are extremely welcome and you are very important to the club. However, we would urge those of you who do enjoy the facilities and the camaraderie of being a Mini and Junior parent to consider ‘investing’ £35 this season and becoming a ‘social’ member of the club yourself. We are certain that you will not regret it.

Hopefully this document will have provided a little bit of insight into the financial operation of the club but, more importantly, the benefits that membership brings to you as a member and to the wider club membership as a whole.

Shipston Rugby Club only has two employees, who work part time and do an outstanding job. The rest of us are unpaid volunteers who love the game of rugby football and love the club, so please support us, ‘advise’ us and, if you can, get involved and help us. The rugby club is very much like the Forth Bridge . . .

Have a great season, and thanks for reading.

Nick Underwood
Chairman, Shipston RFC