3 minute read
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BU Men’s Rugby Team had a disappointing 2018/19 season, finishing bottom of the BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) Western Division 1A. Up against challenging opposition, it saw the team on the end of some heavy defeats.
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Now with the 1st team in the Western Division 2A, and a 2nd team in the league system also, there’s an opportunity to rebuild and see improvement. President of Bournemouth Rugby, Ollie Crookall, discussed the aims they had planned to meet before they got underway.
“Last year they were quite unfortunate in the sense that there was a change in coaching staff, there was a change in quite a lot of the players, because quite a lot of the year I’m in were on placement,” he explained. “They’ve kind of almost had a fresh start. So for this year it was kind of coming back and having a reassessment of where we see ourselves in the BUCS leagues and so on. “This is the first year Bournemouth have ever entered two teams into two different BUCS Leagues. So this year we really wanted to focus on getting a good group of boys together to challenge competitively across both leagues.
“Although we all had our goals to get both teams promoted, we wanted them as a whole to make sure we were very competitive in both,” he added.
Both teams are now several months into their respective campaigns and Ollie has been pleased with the efforts so far. “So far I’d say on the whole it’s been a success,” he said.
“The two teams are both still in their cup competitions respectively, so the 1s are on track to hit our target of the semi-finals and the 2s are overachieving with that.
“The 1s are competitively competing in their league, although we’ve now lost two [games] which kind of puts us a bit further away from where we wanted to be in regards in trying to go and win the league. “But nonetheless, [if] some results go our way postChristmas we’re definitely straight back in it.”
Away from the pitch, the team also prides itself in taking part in charitable efforts, such as when they raised an impressive £6,777 for Movember in 2019. “The one other thing we wanted to set at the start of the season was a fundraising goal, because we do Movember every year,” Ollie explained.
“This year we had a gentleman called William Guilder who
took the reigns and pushed it on to the club on our behalf.
“Basically he tries to stay on top of the boys, making sure that we’re all getting our posts out there, trying to ask for donations, [and] playing quite a pivotal role in organising a cycle [which is the distance] from
Bournemouth to Twickenham and back in a day.
“We ended up finishing with the fourth highest total of any rugby team across the country, only being bettered by the likes of Harlequins Rugby, so actually this year we’ve made a massive impact,” he added.
With further plans to team up with the Women’s Hockey team for a fundraising exhibition match, and with sustained improvement on the pitch, the Men’s Rugby team are certainly on the up.
Get updates from the team at @bu_rugby on Instagram. N
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