Hard graft gets St Francis RFC ready for rugby's long-awaited return

Last weekend saw the Crawley-based club carry out improvements and repairs to the facilities to ensure they were ready for the start of rugby, including painting, cleaning the scrum machine and de-weeding areas around the changing rooms.

St Francis is one of 800 clubs across the country looking forward to the return of rugby, with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) recently giving the green light for clubs to start limited and restricted contact rugby training with inter-club non-contact fixtures able to be organised. This is a big step for clubs as the RFU moves to phase D in the Return to Community Rugby Roadmap.

Plenty of hard work has gone into making the return to community rugby possible, with volunteers at the club certainly not shy in rolling up their sleeves to play their part.

“We have just generally freshened the place up ahead of hopefully playing some touch games into club games in the next four or five weeks,” said director of rugby Dave Callan.

“It has given everyone a chance to give back to the club. We are right next to Gatwick Airport so a lot of our club members have been furloughed.

“Helping out at the club has been good for their mental wellbeing. We had around 10-20 people helping out throughout the weekend.