Dear All,
 
At last, we know! The unlocking is happening and if all goes well we will be able to resume celebrating our game of rugby. Included below is an announcement from the RFU:
 
We welcome last night’s Government announcement that grassroots team sport including community rugby can return on Monday 29 March.
 
Over the coming weeks, we will work with the Government to understand the number of players and format of rugby that will be permitted upon our return in both schools and community rugby. When we have clarified these details, and associated travel queries, we will share the Return to Community Rugby Roadmap alongside a step-by-step guide to returning to training and guidance around facilities re-opening.
 
In the meantime our Six Nations challenge is gathering apace with the following results:
 
Congratulations to the: U6&7s, U10s, U11s, U12s & U13s who have all made a brilliant start - the majority of teams have certainly either reached or are near to reaching, Cardiff with a couple of groups on their way to Dublin!
 
I think most will have reached their destinations by next week so I will give out the final results then - way before the closing date of March 20th!
 
Well done to all who have taken part - it’s such a great achievement.
 

Throwback Thursday... 50s & 60s

Lockdown legend Perry Coleman is still ploughing through boxes of stuff from previous Hon Secs and logging them all for the club archives.

Here are a few photos from the 1950s / 1960s that don't have any captions or names. Is there anyone out there who can help or are they destined to remain anonymous forever?

If you can please email press@colchesterrugby.co.uk or comment on Facebook. Many thanks.

To replace a review of this week’s Six nations games Ed has written an article about someone in his own profession of journalism - Teddy Wakelam…

When England play Wales this Saturday it will mark something of an anniversary for the broadcasting of rugby, and indeed sport in general. What’s more, someone connected with the history of Colchester Rugby Club is very much part of the story.

On January 15th 1927, the match at Twickenham became the first-ever sports event to be broadcast live by BBC Radio, and the man behind the microphone providing the commentary on that historic day was Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam.

A decorated war hero, a former captain of Harlequins and a Wimbledon umpire, Teddy
Wakelam later retired to Colchester where he played a part in the story of the rugby club, writing reports on matches for the local newspapers including the Colchester Gazette and Essex County Standard, and later serving as club president from 1958-60.

But 94 years ago, when the BBC was looking to recruit its first sports commentator, Wakelam, a former public schoolboy and military man, was considered to be the “right sort”.

The bosses at the BBC – and in particular the wonderfully-named Lancelot De Giberne Sieveking – were worried that people listening at home to the new-fangled wireless would not be able to keep up with what was happening on the field of play. So they came up with an ingenious scheme.

Adapting a technique already used in America for the radio broadcast of baseball, Sieveking drew up a grid containing a series of numbered squares to represent locations on the pitch. The idea was that the grid would be published in the Radio Times, and while the commentator described the play, a second voice would chip in, telling listeners which square the action was taking place in.

It appears to have been a success because the following week Wakelam and his side-kick were sent to Arsenal v Sheffield United, which in turn became the first football match to be broadcast on British radio. This time the Radio Times printed a plan of the Highbury Stadium with the grid system.

There’s a theory (disputed by many, it has to be said) that the saying “back to square one” sprung out of this form of innovative radio commentary. True or not, the practice was eventually dropped, but radio commentary of sport never looked back.

As for Teddy Wakelam, after his retirement to Colchester, there is a photograph of him posing slightly diffidently with the 1st XV of 1954, while intriguingly his name appears to have been misspelt on a board listing past presidents in the Mill Road clubhouse!

Another former Colchester club president and player Chum Borges recalls Wakelam as “a solitary gentleman, watching, making notes then leaving. I don’t recall that he visited the clubhouse, he may have done but by the time we had washed and changed he had gone.”

He was clearly a quiet and modest man – but one who will always have a significant place in the history of sports broadcasting.

Thank you Ed.

Here’s to a great weekend of Six Nations’ rugby and challenges.

Take care of yourselves,
Maggie
President CRFC