Although the war had ended shortly before the normal start date of the 1945/46 season, many players were still enlisted and unavailable. Fixture lists had to be compiled and many clubs, like us, needed to get organised again. Because of these difficulties we did not get underway until 1946/47.

With a gap of seven years there were clearly a number of changes behind the scenes as well as on the field, but we still had a core of committed players and experienced officials to call upon. An interim General Meeting was held in July 1946 to form a working committee and re-launch our activities. D.H. Brown continued in the role of President but most other positions changed. Les Coles replaced Ron Boroughs as Honorary Treasurer and Bill Foss retired as Honorary Secretary, to be replaced by Jimmie Garrett. One of the Secretary's key duties was transferred to the new post of Fixture Secretary, which was taken on by Cliff Harrison. He was also elected as Chairman of the Committee. Fred Thacker became Match Secretary. He and Cliff continued in these roles for the next 20 years. Cliff also took on the role as a South Warwickshire representative on the Warwickshire RFU which led to him rising up the county hierarchy over a number of years.

The next few seasons were to prove difficult, both on and off the field and the restart brought many problems, some similar to those experienced on the formation of the club 20 years earlier, but also many new ones. Fortunately the accounts revealed that we were in a very satisfactory financial position with £66 in the bank, thanks largely to two successful dances held during the war. Subscriptions were able to be maintained at the pre-war levels of 10/6 per season, plus a 2/6 match fee.

The continuation of wartime rationing of food, clothing and petrol added to the difficulties in providing after-match refreshment, purchasing kit and travelling to games. Few players yet owned cars and most travelling was by bus, coach or train. Some of these were sort of blessings in disguise, particularly food rationing for everyone wanted to resume a social life and go out to eat and drink. This enabled people to conserve their meagre food coupons and thus make more food available at home. As a result our players and their wives were brought together socially and club spirit was fostered. Clothing coupons were a particular problem. We were able to get some for jerseys through Warwickshire RFU but players had to find coupons for shorts, socks and boots themselves. To illustrate how tight things were, there is a letter on file in the club archive from a visiting player who wrote formally to the Honorary Secretary explaining that he had left a vest behind in our changing rooms the previous Saturday and asking whether we could find it and return it to him. He received a formal reply confirming that his vest had indeed been found and it was duly returned.

With our building materials having been "removed" during the War and with no prospect of replacing them, we abandoned our plans to construct a changing room on Victoria Park and continued to use The Cricketers as our base and use either there or the Royal Pump Rooms for changing. The Borough Council kindly reinstated our use of the Victoria Park pitch and we were able to recover and reinstall our goalposts which had been lent to Lockheed during the latter stages of the War. Cliff Harrison did a good job in reconstructing our fixture list which contained many old friends and if anything was a little stronger than pre-war with a match against Coventry "A" for the first time.

The nucleus of our playing strength was the pre-war members but apart from those killed during the War; some were wounded and unable to play again whilst others had simply grown too old to play or had passed their best with seven more years on the clock. Tom Commander resumed the captaincy with Dr Euan Campbell as his vice captain and other pre-war players to resume included T.L. Wilson-Jerrim, Bill Reading, R.F. Bell and Jim Garrett. There was an infusion of new blood: several good players had joined us during the war and remained to become valuable assets, including Pat Cooke Des Cook and S.C. Cawthorne. Among the new members was R. Wesley, an excellent wing three-quarter, but he broke all four fingers in one hand and gave up the game. Don Wakefield was a scrum-half from Lockheed and R.A. Stephens, I. Williams and Bill Lumley were good forwards.

Another valuable recruit was Captain Bob Hordern M.C., who was sports officer at the nearby Budbrooke Barracks. He was an excellent hooker and in due course became club captain. He brought along many players, both national servicemen and regulars, including Major Mike Harbage M.C. another fine forward and club member. National Service was a mixed blessing as it took some players away, but it also meant that we picked up useful players who were posted into the area, particularly to RAF Gaydon and Wellesbourne and the Kineton and Budbrooke army bases. Some of our players were able to get home at weekends whilst those stationed in our neighbourhood belonging to other clubs, who could not get home, played for us. This feed from the military was important and became a feature of our player profile as, unlike most of our local rivals who had a steady supply of old boys or works' employees, we relied heavily on unattached people moving into the area.

We defeated Lockheed 8-3 in the first post-war game. The line-up for that match is not confirmed but for our opening match at home against Old Laurentians we fielded the following side, which played more or less the same all season - Des Cooke, R. Wesley, R.F. Bell, Euan Campbell, Pip Moore, Bill Reading, Pat Cook, Bob Hordern, C. Sudlow, S.C. Cawthorne, Jim Garrett, Geoff Booth, Bill Lumley, Tom Commander, Ken Hitchman.

One of the features of the season was the number of local Derby games. We lost twice to both Kenilwoth and Stratford and won and lost against Lockheed. We defeated Old Warwickians in the Boxing Day game and also beat Old Leamingtonians in our first peace-time fixture against them. Overall results were more or less even with 12 wins and 13 losses, but 10 of our wins were before Christmas which was followed by one of the worst winters on record and severe weather conditions in January and February caused a seven-week interruption to matches. We lost momentum after the break and one of the factors in this was that Tom Commander's work took him away and he was mostly unavailable. Dr Euan Campbell, his vice-captain stepped up to become temporary skipper for the second half of the season and T.L. Wilson-Jerrim took his place.

The first match following the big freeze saw the introduction of regular morning fixtures in London, prior to the international games at Twickenham. We travelled by train to Paddington and picked up a coach to play at Beckenham before going on to the stadium for the Scotland game. It was not long before we went to both internationals each season. When petrol rationing ended we went by coach and these popular trips continued until the early 1980's. The price of tickets at Twickenham was 10/- in the stands and 5/- standing.We entered the Lockheed sevens for the first time, which were inaugurated in 1945 and were to become the main local tournament in the post-war years. The 2nd XV had a stop-start season. After an opening day win over Lockheed they had four weeks off without a fixture and more or less wound up their programme after the bad weather in January and February. They played 13 games and won 5.

Prior to the start of the season, we wrote to Lockheed, Old Warwickians and Old Leamingtonians, pointing out that with the emergence of Lockheed there were now four clubs in the area, each attempting to run two sides. Referring to our pre-war experience that even with three clubs it was difficult for all of us to field two sides, with four clubs the problem was now likely to get worse. A meeting of the clubs was therefore called, under the chairmanship of the President of the Warwickshire RFU, to consider the possibility of amalgamating, with a view to establishing a first-class club in the area, to put us on a level with Nuneaton and Rugby who had achieved this with similar populations. As when previously suggested in 1935, the other clubs did not agree with the proposal but, as a compromise it was agreed to form a Warwick and Leamington District Union with somewhat similar objectives. The Union fielded a representative side drawn from the four clubs and in the first year played Moseley and Rugby District.

These arrangements led to some acrimonious correspondence in the columns of the Leamington Courier between H.J. Butler our club reporter and The Onlooker, who was the Courier's rugby correspondent and at the time was playing for Old Warwickians. The Onlooker was opposed to amalgamation and thought Leamington wanted it because it would strengthen their position in relation to the other clubs, whereas Butler favoured it suggesting that the area should have a first class club drawing on all the other clubs for their players and that Leamington was potentially that first class club. This did not go down too well with the other clubs and we were forced to disassociate ourselves from his view. It was proposed that the following season the District should play a full Saturday fixture list and whilst clubs did not mind releasing their players for mid-week games they objected to weakening their teams on Saturdays. The proposal was put to an extraordinary general meeting and our players voted 22-4 not to support the District fixture policy and the idea was abandoned, although mid-week representative fixtures continued.