History

In late1984 Dai Bowden moved to Holmes Chapel. Early in 1985, at the request of his wife, who was fed up with him moping around on Saturdays, he and Keith Ashford prepared an advert for rugby players and posted it in various places around the village. The first meeting took place at the Leisure Centre and with some sixteen attendees it was decided to go ahead with starting the rugby club.

Present at that meeting was Brian Meyrick who, over the years, has held various positions on the committee as well as being a player in the early days. He along with Dai and Keith are probably the only founders who are currently involved in the club. This is not to say that all the others have disappeared as David Pochin was at that meeting and he is a current sponsor of Holmes Chapel RUFC as well as having played for many years.

For the first weeks we trained at the Leisure Centre on Sunday mornings where we were helped by Winsford Rugby Club, several of whom turned up training every week.

In the early days we had a very strong Ladies Committee who dealt with social functions and raised us a lot of capital. These stalwarts were Anna Bowden, Judith Ashford, Francis Brandon and Pamela Dyson. Much of this capital is still there for emergency money. Robin Brandon came up with the idea of the 100 club which is still serving us well. At one of these functions, a Christmas Dance Bob Dyson turned out in a pink fairy outfit and accompanied Father Christmas on his rounds.

We started by playing against various teams 3rds and 4ths and managed to complete our fixture list and on the 1st October 1986 we were accepted into the RFU and joined the leagues a few years later.

In the first years we played at the Leisure Centre on the school pitches but this could not be a permanent thing. We asked the local council if they could find us a pitch. They offered us some ground at what was then Cranage Hospital (now Cranage Hall where we have our dinners). There appeared to be a large tree stump in the corner of the pitch so Bob Dyson and myself set about digging this out on Sunday mornings instead of going to church. We got it out, leaving a crater some 12 foot in diameter. We then set about marking out a pitch and discovered that the crater missed the pitch by about 10 yards (that’s about 9 metres to you current lot). Never mind.

This pitch wasn’t very good and we badgered the council and we were given the old cricket pitch at Cranage which was a much better pitch and served us for some seasons.

We next went to Frank Walton’s farm on Goostrey Lane for a couple of years while retaining Crange as a second/ third team pitch. We ran three sides in those days and were at our peak of membership.

Our next port of call was at Dave Pochin’s parents farm where we had two pitches and they were the driest pitches we ever had. We never had a game called off while we were there. Eventually the farm was sold and we moved to our present place where we initially played on the other side of the car park until the pitch collapsed on us and due to Steve Ranger’s Power Point presentation at a meeting attended by Steve, Martin Cummins and Dai,( we won by superior drinking ability against the cricket club) we moved to our current pitch.

We had to move the pitch after a couple of seasons as it was mostly wet so we went closer to the railway line and this has proved to be the best position.

Since then the club has gone from strength to strength, many old members have returned to play Vets Rugby and show the young lads how Holmes Chapel used to do it. 2009/10 bought Holmes Chapel their best ever season with the 1st XV Captained by Ed Meyrick they managed to secure an historic double, winning South Lancs & Cheshire 3 and also the Cheshire Plate, whilst also making the RFU National Plate Quarter Final to make the season one for the history books.

In 2010/11 the club will be playing at their highest ever level in South Lancs & Cheshire 2, level 8 of the National pyramid.