President’s Welcome Graham Armitage

Well, time flies and I extend a very warm welcome to you all today for this our last home game of the season against Doncaster Knights. And what a season this has been with some notable victories against a number of top sides and having achieved our objective of maintaining Championship status for another year in this the second tier of national rugby. For this we need to extend our congratulations and sincere thanks to our DOR Gareth Davies and Head Coach Matt Cairns, their coaching teams and the squad for their outstanding efforts with such limited resources in comparison with other fully professional and semi professional teams in the league. I also need to thank you the club members and supporters for turning out in such substantial numbers for our home games this season, and who can forget our trip to Jersey when around 400 made the trip to support our team. You really did make the difference at times and proved to be the 16th. man on the pitch on several occasions. Last week Caldy travelled to Ealing to face the league leaders on a sunny day on their artificial pitch whilst resting some key players on the day. Caldy started well, having first given away an early try, to level the scores and after 30 minutes were only 21-14 behind but were gradually worn down following an excellent attacking and free running performance by the home team. Despite having our own attacking moments, each time Ealing attacked they seemed to score whereas the reverse was true for Caldy whose overall display probably deserved a slightly better return. Credit to Ealing though, there is a reason that they are top of the league and if they beat Jersey today they will have fully deserved the right to promotion to the Premiership which yet again will be denied them this season.Today we welcome Doncaster Knights for their first ever trip to Paton Field, having lost our previous encounter at Castle Park on Boxing Day last year. That game in many ways was similar to the Ealing match last Saturday with Caldy competitive early on and Doncaster capitalising on a number of mistakes and eventually gaining complete control and winning handsomely by full time. We hope we will be considerably more competitive on home turf and will be attempting to level up results later this afternoon. Today’s game therefore presents a further challenge against a Doncaster side in mid table who will be determined to put a recent run of poor results behind them which has prevented them from challenging for further honours. The Knights have a tremendous facility at Castle Park and with plans in place are the only Championship team that can at present qualify for Premiership Rugby if they were to gain promotion. That will not happen this season but will no doubt be very much on their agenda in seasons to come. They have a number of quality players who presented us with problems in our previous fixture, and will no doubt be extremely competitive today. Doncaster rugby club were formed in 1875 and for many years played junior Yorkshire rugby, at one stage venturing into the breakaway Northern Union for a few years around 1900. In the 1950’s they moved to their current location in Armthorpe Road but it wasn’t until 1979 that they made their mark in rugby union winning the Yorkshire Shield. At the introduction of the leagues in 1987 they were playing at Level 10 Yorkshire 2 and by 1997 had progressed to North 1. A year or so later they were in the National Leagues and on the back of a Lottery grant built a new clubhouse in 2000. This was the precursor to further development and by 2010 the club had achieved Championship status. Apart from one season they have remained at this level ever since having finished 2nd and 3rd during this period, on one occasion almost achieving promotion to the Premiership. We hope that, whatever the result today, the Knights enjoy the Caldy experience on this their first ever visit to Paton Field. We welcome their Chairman Tony DeMulder, Will Foers their Secretary and General Manager Neil Holmes and his wife Alison who are hopefully joining us for lunch today. Today we celebrate our Past Players Reunion with almost 300 attending lunch and our sincere thanks must go in particular to Roger Flashman for yet again organising and presiding over this event. Roger is stepping down as Club Secretary at the end of the season after numerous years of service for which he has our utmost gratitude, and will no doubt be saying a few words during lunch. Our thanks also go to those who are travelling some distance to attend today including those from as far afield as Australia and look forward to

Graham Armitage