Leamington’s Senior A rugby team goes into this year’s competition with a younger team than last year.
Leamington Rugby
A number of last year’s players have gone overseas and will be replaced by players from last year’s successful Colts team. President David Peters still expects the team to do as well as it did last year, when it made the semi-finals.
He expects their toughest competition will come from Hinuera, Southern United and Putāruru. Their Senior A team has a new coach this year in Daryl Bennison, who has been an assistant coach of the team for the last four years.
The Senior B team is being coached by Hadley Thomas. Leamington play their home games at their own grounds in Carlyle Street, Leamington where they have three fields. Both their Senior 1A and Senior 1B teams will open their season with home games against Putāruru on April 5.
Leamington will field five rugby teams this year. In addition to the two Senior teams, they will have an Under-21 team, a Presidents team and will join with the Kio Kio club to field an Under-85ks team. David Peters said Leamington had hoped to field a women’s team this year also.
But they have not yet managed to get enough players to field a 15-a-side team. But they do have a keen group of women players in training, and they will take part in whatever 7-a-side and 10-a-side tournaments they can.
Peters said the club fields seven netball teams and is looking to expand into senior hockey.
The Leamington Squash Club is also part of the Club. In all, including squash, they have about 1000 active participants, including around 350 juniors. They also have around 200 social members.
It also does its own fund-raising and makes an annual donation to a worthy local cause. Last year’s donations were approximately $45,000.
The recipients of this year’s donations from the club will be Waikato Kids in Need and the Cambridge Volunteer Fire Brigade.
