Friday 29 October 2010

Shaving Michael Finnegan

Stop press!

Michael Finnegan has pledged to sacrifice his copper toned facial foliage in the name of Millwall Rugby Club.  If we can raise £500 for the club by tomorrow night, he's said he will shave it off!

Visit http://tinyurl.com/millwallbeard now to pledge £5 or as much as you can afford!  You'll be helping the club... and he needs a good shave.

Gillette will thank you.  As will your club.


Players' Packs - Discounts on Millwall Kit

We've put together a range of packs of players' kit, bags, tops etc.

Buying your Millwall kit this way gives you a saving over the cost of buying normally from the online shop.

Ask your team manager for details and an order form - and remember you need to be a paid up member to buy at the discounted rates.  If you're not paid up yet, you can still order but at the full shop prices.

Thursday 28 October 2010

England v Australia & England v South Africa International Tickets

The club has secured some great tickets at the upcoming Autumn International fixtures of:
  • England v Australia
  • England v South Africa
We've delayed the raffle deadline for both of these games by a week (because we realised we didn't go a particularly good job at promoting them this past week!)  So.... you could be in with a really good chance of winning.

It only take a minute to enter online and entries cost just £2.50. 

In addition to being in with the chance to get your hands on these sought-after tickets, you'll get the warm fuzzy feeling of having really helped the club raise some much needed funds.

So, dig deep into your [credit card] and enter now at:

Andrew

Last Chance for the Christmas Party

We're still accepting bookings for the Christmas Party, but only until Saturday.

You'll need to have paid your deposit (of £20) by midnight on Saturday to secure your place.

Pay your deposit online now at: http://millwallrugby.blogspot.com/2010/10/christmas-party-date-for-your-diary.html

We've already got good numbers, so it should be a great evening... and very nearby for those of you living on the island.

Leigh Dargan
Social Secretary

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Are you available this weekend? ...and message about Thursday Training

Sadly we haven't had good responses this week so far to selection@millwallrugby.com and we do need more players to fill our fixtures this weekend.

If you have already emailed selection@millwallrugby.com this week, thank you, it is much appreciated. You do not need to email again.

If you have not yet responded to selection, can you please let us know where you stand with your availability for this weekend (30/10/10), even if you have already told a team manager personally

(Please note you do need to email selection@millwallrugby.com each week  in order to be selected to play).

And finally, reminder about training tomorrow night on the paddock, we have a forwards specialist coming down, please make the effort to come down and make sure you bring a mouth shield and anything else you think you may require for a session that will include some contact. Yes 'backs' you are needed in case your wondering.

See you all tomorrow.

Dave Roberts
Coach 

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Tuesday Training

In order to rest the paddock, Tuesday fitness training will move from the paddock to take place at a range of other venues in the local area

Coach Dave Roberts has plans to take the club for a range of alternative activities, ranging from general fitness on the park, to wrestling, boxing or even climbing at Mile End.

Unless advised otherwise, you should assume that training will be on Millwall Park on Tuesdays.  Meet outside the clubhouse for a 7.30pm start (although the clubhouse itself will not necessarily be open).  

Any change to this arrangement will be published via the club's "status" on Facebook and will also be included in the Monday (men's) selection email.

Try and get as many of your mates down to Tuesday and Thursday training as possible, regardless of whether they play 1st or 4th team, so that we can put out better teams at the weekends.  Venus Women are very welcome to attend Tuesday night training too, and it's a great way to start if you're new to the club.




Club Captain Changes

You may be aware that Paul Gossip has recently decided to step down from his role as Club Captain.

On behalf of the club I would like to thank Paul for all his efforts and valuable contribution to the club during the past season and a half.

While we explore possible options to fill the vacancy in the short term, I have asked David Leftley, Club Secretary to take on responsibility for ensuring the key Club Captain duties are covered in the immediate interim.

David has kindly agreed to do this for the next week or so and will be chairing the weekly selection meetings this week working closely with the team managers and coaching team to manage selection, training and other playing matters that arise. For the time being, any "CapCom" business will be dealt with as part of the usual "FullCom" business.

Larry McCabe
Chairman
Millwall Rugby Club

Monday 25 October 2010

Membership Renewals

If you haven't yet paid your club membership for this year (May 2010-May2011) then please take a moment to do so.

Your club needs your membership payments to make sure we can continue providing coaching, pitches, training equipment, training sessions and of course to help run the club facilities.  Please show your support for the club and make the committee's lives easier, by paying now without us needing to chase you.




Alternatively, you can pay by cheque (Payable to Millwall Rugby Club) or by direct transfer to our bank account.


Thursday 21 October 2010

Sports Injury Clinic at Saracens


Millwall Rugby Club is a partner club to Saracens. One of the benefits of your Millwall Membership is that you can access certain benefits through the Saracen's Partner programme, such as access to the Saracens Sports Injury Clinic.

To find out more about costs or book an appointment call 07500 838551 or e-mail sportsinjuryclinic@saracens.net.

Christmas Party - Deposit due this week to secure your place

Just a quick reminder that if you want to come to our Christmas Party night on 11th December, you should pay your deposit of £20 this week.  All the details are here.

Book online now at: http://millwallrugby.blogspot.com/2010/10/christmas-party-date-for-your-diary.html

As of the end of this week, we'll release our allocation of tickets back to the hotel to sell to other people, so we can't guarantee you'll get a place if you don't book this week.

If you can't commit yet, contact Leigh Dargan at socialsecretary@millwallrugby.com and we'll do our best to add you onto the booking later.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Halloween Fright Fest - Saturday 30th October

Saturday 30th October will be simply spooktacular as the clubhouse will be converted into a Halloween Horror Fest!

Bring all your mates along as we open the clubhouse from 6.30pm until late for a Halloween Fancy Dress party. There'll be a Halloween dresscode for people playing on Saturday 30th so start planning now and get your costume sorted... you know it's a good idea to make an effort!

If anyone is able to help out with running the bar, please drop a line to socialsecretary@millwallrugby.com.

Members and guests welcome.

For more info, contact Leigh Dargan at socialsecretary@millwallrugby.com.

10% off your curry - Another Benefit of your Millwall Membership

Thanks to a recent sponsorship deal, arranged by our Club Development team you can now get 10% off your Peshwari, Papadums and Phall at The Gaylord Restaurant (valid for takeaways and dine-ins).

To qualify for the discount, you need to show you Millwall Membership card when ordering or collecting your food.

If you haven't got your membership card yet, send a passport photo digitally to membership@millwallrugby.com, making sure of course you've paid your membership fee.

Andrew
Club Communications


Links:

The Gaylord to Sponsor Millwall Rugby Club

PRESS RELEASE 20th October 2010

MILLWALL Rugby Club have struck a sponsorship deal for the 2010/11 season with a top Tandoori restaurant. The Gaylord, located close to Millwall's Island Gardens clubhouse, is already a popular haunt for players seeking to refuel on quality curry after matches. The deal sees the club receive a cash donation while members will enjoy a discount at the Manchester Road-based eatery. In return, The Gaylord will receive publicity via the club's websites, publications and at the clubhouse.

Millwall’s Development Officer Andrew Bates says the club is going from strength to strength having opened the new clubhouse last year in formerly derelict DLR arches. "We can now play adult rugby on Millwall Park and it has really helped us get the exposure and growth we need to make good use of the clubhouse," he said.

Mr Bates said the club's strong growth has seen playing costs rise sharply too, adding: "Members have had to cover these costs so it would be remiss of us not to approach generous and successful businesspeople such as Gaylord owner Abdul Gani."

Mr Gani said: "We are delighted to sponsor the rugby club. Their members order deliveries and come in a lot so we are now looking forward to seeing more of them."

The club hopes to increase the sponsorship it secures each year. "Given our location we attract a lot of City and Canary Wharf professionals, from partners and department heads through to younger contractors," said Mr Bates. "We've also a strong and growing youth programme in the Millwall Lions and parents are joining up too. We think the growing number of people we're signing up will prove attractive to willing sponsors, be they recruiters, car-hire firms or great restaurants like The Gaylord."

To discuss sponsoring the club, call Andrew Bates on 07798 732260, or email development@millwallrugby.com.

Monday 18 October 2010

Paddock Lights Work Day (what we did)

Special thanks to Andrew Bates, Gaz Williams, Elise Page and Andrew Hesselden for turning up on Saturday to help work on the Paddock.  Also special thanks to Pete Rowe who dug a big hole the week before.

It is true to say that it's a little disappointing that we were not supported by more members of the club, but nevertheless we achieved some of what we set out to do.  Here are some of the things we did:

  • cleaned the Farm's barbecue and returned it to them
  • trimmed/sawed/hacked foliage away from the lights to improve light for training
  • dug trenches and identified where the electric cable is broken (which is preventing some of the lights working).   Unfortunately where the break is, means it has not been possible to get the lights working yet.
  • came up with a plan for rewiring the lights to get them working again.
  • tidied and cleaned the portakabin up a bit

We'll probably need to have another session again to finish the work, but here are a few pics from the day...




  





Tuesday 12 October 2010

Club Christmas Party - It's time to book your place!


Ladies and Gentleman,

The festive season is not far away and the party season will soon begin.

We'll be holding our club Christmas party on Saturday 11th December 2010 at the Crowne Plaza Docklands, just a couple of miles away near Excel.

The theme for the evening is "Viva Las Vegas", so there's a chance for all of us to get dressed up.

Tickets are just £44.95 which is great value and includes an arrival drink, a 3-course meal, disco, roulette and black jack tables. To keep prices down for you, the club won't make any profit out of this and we won't charge extra for your guests, but if you're not already a club member, please consider joining as a social member or renew your membership before the party.

To secure your place, you just need to pay a deposit of £20 now (before Thursday 21st October) and the remaining amount will be due in November. Places will be limited, as this is a shared party so it really will be first-come-first-served!!

More details: http://www.crowneplazadocklands.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/52878_cp_docklands_xmas_brochure.pdf

Let me know if you have any queries.

Leave your deposit at the clubhouse, with your name clearly marked on a envelope!!

Alternatively for your convenience, you can pay by PayPal (but we need to charge a small extra fee to cover the transaction costs if you want to do this).


Choose Payment Amount
Your full name
Contact Email


Cheers

Leigh, Social Sec and Team
socialsecretary@millwallrugby.com

Monday 11 October 2010

Seven ways you could help your club

The committee is extraordinarily busy at the moment just keeping things running and trying to develop the club.  We could really use some extra help!  We're looking for some volunteers to help us out running the adult side of the club.  Here are seven ways you could help us out....

1. Club Membership Coordinator
- to receive data as adult members join the club
- make sure new members are added to mailing lists
- send new people a nice welcome email
- approach new members to choose a membership payment option
- make membership cards that give access to the clubhouse

2. Match report writers
- people who want to come and watch games (or play)
- write interesting match reports for the programme and local press (linking in with our club press officer)

3. First aiders
- people with first aid training or who want to be trained as a first aider to provide match day support for our adult teams.

4. People to help us dig holes in the paddock this weekend
- To help us install more lighting on the paddock


5. Competent electricians to put wires in the holes we dig this weekend
- To help install more lighting on the paddock

6. Bar People / Mixologists
- To serve behind our brilliant bar, serving delicious beer, and mixing amazing cocktails.

7. Sponsorship Gurus
- To come up with clever ideas for getting sponsorship for the adult side of the club and actually follow through on those ideas, make sure we can deliver things in return, get the cheque in and manage our relationship with that sponsor to make sure they are happy.

If you can help with any of these, please email andrew@millwallrugby.com in the first instance and I'll put you in touch with the right people on the committee.

Cheers
Andrew

Autumn Internationals - Raffle Tickets

It’s that time of year again and the Autumn Internationals are fast approaching.

Tickets up for grabs

We've been allocated tickets to three of the four England games and as per usual we'll be distributing them to Club Members via a raffle, the winners of which, will be given the right to buy the International Tickets at face value.

We have been allocated 24 tickets to each of the games ranging in price from £40 to £73 each.

The first raffle is for tickets to England vs New Zealand game at Twickenham on Saturday November 6th, Kick off is at 14.30. The raffle will be held in the Clubhouse at 8pm on Saturday the 16th October and tickets are on sale now, details below.

Be in with a chance to win

Raffle tickets are just £2.50 each and are available for purchase 
  • at the bar in the clubhouse
  • from your team manager on Saturdays
  • from the secretary by emailing secretary@millwallrugby.com and by transferring money to the club's bank account (HSBC 40-02-44 / 21413503)

You can also trade in your volunteer hours at 1 hour for 1 ticket, get in contact with volunteer@millwallrugby.com to ensure your total hours are up to date. 
 Even if you don't have many volunteer hours to cash in or just purchase one or two entries to the raffle, you're still
in with a good chance of winning because we don't let any winner buy more than four international tickets

The other games are:
  • England vs Australia on the 13th of November, kick off is 14.30 – Raffle tickets will be sold from the 10th of October and drawn on the 23rd of October.
  • England vs South Africa on the 27th of November, kick off is 14.30 – Raffle tickets will be sold from the 17th of October start and drawn on the 30th of October.


Remember, the chance to buy international tickets are one of the benefits of Millwall Membership so if you win the raffle, you'll need to make sure you are a paid up member to exercise your right to buy the tickets.

Good luck in the Raffle and I hope to see you down at Clubhouse
enjoying the warmth and refreshments.

Regards
David

David Leftley
Secretary