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President’s Welcome

Throughout autumn, the calendar was dominated by rugby, with the world cup at St James’ Park, Scottish RFU using the fantastic new sporting facilities at the school and our own ONA celebrations with the John Elders memorial game, hosted at Novocastrians RFC where a fairly youthful ON team coached by Jim Pollock (67-77) took on a veteran Novos RFC side and ran out 66-19 winners. We look to even the sides up in 2016 and establish this as annual fixture. Importantly, a great time was had by all in the clubhouse afterwards!

Rugby continued in our thoughts with the 90th annual ONA Dinner in October with the usual full house enjoying the hospitality at school and former England full back, Jonathan Webb (74-81) giving us an insight behind the scenes of a Rugby World Cup. A raffle raised over £2,000 for the Bursary Campaign with a print of the school signed by the Scottish team. Before we change allegiance too much we are pleased to hear the ONA will also be represented in the coming Six Nations tournament as Paul Gustard (84-94) joins the coaching staff at Twickenham.

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As the end of term drew near, a Christmas lunch was enjoyed by a large group of ONs at the Northern Counties Club, including the Headmaster, Head Boy and Head Girl. Please come and join us at one or more of our monthly Friday meetings.

We have also taken delivery of the entire upgraded merchandise range and all items are now in stock. Everything is available for delivery with details to be found on page 3.

The next major event we look forward to is the annual London ONA Dinner on 4 March – following last year’s success, it is being held again at The East India Club. Growing in popularity every time and with an increasing contingent travelling from further afield –mostly from Newcastle, but some as far as Hong Kong! This dinner is fast becoming established as an unofficial school reunion for many residing in the south and with tickets subsidised for undergraduates it would be great to see a few more recent leavers. Any parents reading this, please pass this information on as it could be the most reliable way to get in touch with our newest members! Details to be found on the back cover of this magazine.

Chris Rutter (92-02) ONA President

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