Supporting Return to Rugby at St Mary's

Aim

3 PROJECTS:INSTALL NEW POSTS, REFURBISH PLAYGROUND & FIX STORAGE. INSPIRE OUR COMMUNITY TO BE ACTIVE TOGETHER & THE BEST THEY CAN BE

WHO ARE ST MARY'S RFC?

We are a diverse and inclusive Rugby Club based in Bradley Stoke, Bristol running  

• Minis and Juniors teams from the age of 6-17, 
• 2 Senior Ladies Teams that are a Pathway for Bristol Bears Women and 
• 3 Senior Mens teams

We are an O2 Touch Centre welcoming players from outside of our Club and we also run a Walking Rugby team for families and Mixed Ability participants.  We are also home to other sporting teams, Gaelic Footballers St Nicks and Western Gaels and Association Football youth teams from Little Stoke and Bradley Stoke.

We have a clear vision to become the best Community Rugby Club in Bristol.  This means offering great Rugby, Other Sports and Social opportunities to everyone in our community.

Bradley Bull welcoming our non rugby members of our community on our fun day

WHAT CAN YOU HELP US WITH?

We have three specific issues with our facilities that need fixing and without our normal income due to the effects of COVID we are using this Crowdfunder to make these happen:

1) Replace two sets of posts on our training and reserve pitch. As you can see these are currently unusable due to rust and corrosion. We have had to take the tops off the posts for safety reasons.  We want to replace these old posts which with lightweight aluminium posts with hinged bases.  These allow us to change the use of the pitches from Rugby only to other sports including Gaelic Football and Football.

1 of the 4 sets of posts we need to replace

2)  We also have a playground that is currently unsafe and de-commissioned - we'd like to replace the broken elements of this so that the playground can be used by the families that come to the Club for all the different physical and social activities that happen at St Mary's.

Our young persons playground in need of a safety refurb

3) Storage - we have been given a temporary building which has the potential to be turned into a kit store for all the equipment used by the various sporting teams that we host.  The building has just 3 sides however so we need to build a 4th side and make it watertight.

Our 3-sided storage opportunity

WHY HELP ST MARY'S?

Our usual summer income comes from being able to host our Minis and Juniors Festival in April, where over 40 Clubs come to play, summer parties for corporate clients, as well as social events and functions, including weddings, and birthday parties. Over the last 5 years these events have been vital to raise funds for us to carry our improvements to our facilities and to help us widen participation.  Because of the COVID situation we have so far lost £40,000 of income this year from not being able to run these events.

Many of the children in our community come from families that struggle to make ends meet. Government research shows our community is very high (2) on the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index.

Some of our future St Mary's and Bristol Bears Ladies in training

We want to both improve our facilities and extend our outreach to our community. 

If we beat our initial target we want to use the stretch target and extra funds to subsidise membership to the families of our young people to encourage more participation in Rugby and Sporting Activities at our Club.  We want to offer free food to all our young players on Sundays after training and playing.

Our Mini and Junior Teams have room for new recruits and we also have ambitions to create U13 and U15 Girls teams, to go alongside our highly successful 2 Ladies Teams.

our newly formed U15 Girls squad

OUR TRACK RECORD OF HELPING OTHERS

Despite our own difficulties, St Mary's have been active in raising cash for our Community, raising funds for the NHS Charities, RFU Injured Players Foundation, the Bristol Bears Community Foundation, the Luke Wheaton Trust and Mental Health Awareness.   

hosting the riders and raising cash for the Luke Wheaton Trust

TIME TO HELP OURSELVES AGAIN

But now we need to raise our own funds to complete our improvement projects so we can continue widening participation for Girls and Women's Rugby and provide better facilities so that when COVID is over we can generate more income ourselves and become sustainable again.

Last year we were successful in raising funds to cover the installation of a new Kitchen, install new showers in the referees room and to undertake Pitch Improvement works.  We benefited from match funding from Sport England's 'Return to Pay: Active Together' fund and we hope to get further Sport England support for these new improvements to continue our mission to become the best community club.

PLEASE SUPPORT US IN OUR MISSION 

This project successfully funded on 12th November 2021