With sadness, I have to report the death of Neil Waterfall, at the end of December, after illness due to lung cancer. Neil was a quality centre who played for us in the late 1970s and early 80s and was the fulcrum of one of our best three-quarter lines in a team that broke the club record of games won in a season (still intact). Neil moved to Leamington from Fullerians (of Luton) who we used to play on a regular basis His next-door neighbour happened to be Peter Payne, captain of our Stags (4th team) and Peter persuaded him to join us and kept him as a secret Stag for a while before the selectors realised how good he was. He was also a good fast bowler and played with Peter for Fords for several years. He left the area to work in Oman before retiring to Sussex. Our best wishes go to his family.

The new year started pretty much like the end of the old one and the first team lost again by a narrow margin, this time against an improved Barkers Butts team. We led by a penalty at half time but found it hard to hold possession or position and the visitors went ahead by two tries. Although we pulled one back with 20 minutes to go, we could not sustain any real pressure and lost by 10-17. See John Warner’s report on the website

Very few games were played last week due to the bad weather and some games may be at risk again this week. As things stand - we are away at Worcester who we beat by 50 points in October. A repeat performance would be nice. The Seconds are away at Earlsdon on Friday night (7.00) and the Colts are away at Stratford on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday the U16 are at Barkers, the U15 play Silhillians in the Warwickshire Cup and the mini age groups are training at Moorefields. On Sunday afternoon the Ladies are playing Inner Warrior at Worcester kicking off at 2.00

There are a few international tickets available for the 6 Nations. Get in touch asap if interested. This is the last chance.

Johnlizlyons@btopenworld.com