Seaton Rangers ARLFC

Seaton Rangers ARLFC Open Age Squad

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created a very uncertain landscape for grassroots sports clubs making it very challenging for our clubs to survive - like many other clubs, Seaton Rangers ARLFC is facing financial pressures with the on-going situation.

With our usual revenue streams significantly impacted, we are reaching out for your support to help us raise money for a Covid-19 Relief Fund. This will enable us to continue to provide improved club facilities for our members and the wider community we serve. The Sport England scheme will give us 50% of whatever we generate up to £10,000.

To enable long term growth in the club and trying to come out of this fighting we plan on investing any raised funds into creating our new ‘Rugby Lounge/Sports Bar’. We want to create first class multi-purpose function suite to create a modern environment that can be used by both the clubs own sports teams and the need of the wider community within the clubhouse, this gives us an additional facility and source of much needed revenue for our club in addition to the members the bar area to still enjoy and the function room for community events such as christenings, weddings and birthday party’s etc. The new ‘Rugby Lounge’ a place for us to entertain the visiting clubs and also a place for us to show our Rugby history with a timeline of memorabilia and photos around the room from the very beginning to the Current teams. These new additions are much needed in this area and Seaton is in need of a community hub to watch all sports together once this pandemic is over. This will help Seaton Rangers to better serve its members and the local community with another function room in the community.

Who we are – and what we do…

Seaton Rangers ARLFC dates back to as far as the 1890's and has always been the heartbeat of the local community. We pride ourselves on being a family friendly club and have regularly seen second or even third-generation players coming through our teams. Seaton rangers ARLFC is a club where completion and friendship go hand in hand. We have 2 senior teams and numerous Boys and Girls junior teams from U7’s all the way to U16’s with over 200+ players registered to the club. A master's team is still currently in the planning with COVID-19 putting a halt to that for the time being.

In addition to this separate work are ongoing into modernisation of the pitch playing surfaces, paths and viewing areas to enable games to be enjoyed by villagers and supporters, keeping sporting facilities and player's health and wellbeing at the core of our long term plan. The more we can engage with the village the better and new supporters are always welcome once the games restart.

 In the Community 

The Club acts as a ‘hub’ for the local community and historically we have links with a large number of educational institutions in the area, our Local Semi Professional Rugby League Team Workington Town and Also a local cycling group Team XIII who plan a charity ride once a year from the club. Local schools regularly visit the grounds at Seaton Rangers ARLFC and our aim is to increase the amount of Rugby League in our local schools and promote Rugby League core values.  We host summer sporting camps, along with extra support coaching for local schools. 

Our facilities are used beyond rugby and we share our grounds with the local community groups who use the facilities throughout the year as well as local people who use the club for events such as Christenings, weddings, Birthdays, various classes and community social gatherings.

Why are we doing this Fundraising Appeal?

Seaton Rangers ARLFC has suffered badly as a result of the Covid Pandemic. Over 40 pre-booked events (Birthday Parties, Christenings, Weddings, Sponsored Matches, and Awards Dinners etc.) have been cancelled and crucial income has been lost. Initially, our focus was solely on survival. However, the Club Committee were determined to update and develop the club for the future of the club and the community. We owed it to the generations of former players and members, all of our current players from minis through to seniors, plus the local community to deliver a strong and secure future that can be enjoyed for the foreseeable. All village teams would be welcome to have a modernised venue that can be used for events and end of year presentation nights and functions whilst being able to watch multiple sports during major events and big game days. 

What is needed?

It has become ever more obvious during the course of 2020 that for community-based clubs such as Seaton Rangers, a viable and sustainable future can only be guaranteed by a strong financial base supported by multiple income streams. The reason to develop the new ‘Rugby Lounge’/ sports bar is once we are able to open we have another great place for the community to come and have a beer and reminisce looking at the timeline of previous players and proud members of the community throughout the club.

 What have we been doing?

We haven’t rested on our laurels. The first action was to reduce or stop all non-essential expenditure. What was initially anticipated to last a couple of months, we are currently in 3rd lockdown. Excellent work by our team of volunteer’s ensured all non-essential items such as energy consumption and stock levels were reduced and good management see’s us ticking over each month.

We took this opportunity to invest some money into the club and we created a beer garden, in the summer when restrictions temporarily eased, several socially distanced gatherings took place with an excellent opening day of the new beer garden, we had live music and a great day was had by all. We were able to take advantage of the good weather and continued to put on events for the community and as a club we were able to implement a one-way system, sanitising stations and socially distanced seating, as was required at the time.

We are currently trying to secure a grant for the much needed Gym update as well as recently securing a grant for the pitch drainage work.

In the meantime, our team of volunteers continue to maintain our facilities and grounds so we are in the best position going forward when able to.