Clubs & Societies
OA Football Club
The Junior club has now been running for around 15 seasons and is well established with rugby on offer to boys and girls from the age of 6 up to 18. One of the focuses we have had in recent seasons is to try to bring the Junior and Senior club closers together. In the past they had run almost as two separate entities with different objectives, requirements and personnel. We have taken a number of steps to try to address this and it seems to be paying off; we now feel much more like “One Club” with a shared set of goals. I hope as current and former players get older and have families of their own they will take them down to the club on Sunday and further increase the connection between the two sides of the club. We made the traditional Boxing Day trip down to Old Whits and we were able to get a bit of a revenge for their heavy defeat of us the previous year. I think it is fair to say we had the youth and speed and they had the size and experience. It was a close game but we were the eventual winners 41-35. The Annual Dinner was on the 11 April at our traditional venue of the East India Club. The great friend of OAFC, Terry Walsh, was the speaker and we managed to have the best attendance we have had in years with the room at full capacity. The big Social Event on the OAFC calendar was the Black and Blue Ball held in a Marquee at the club on 6 June. There were nearly 450 people in attendance and the evening was deemed a great success. We managed to raise a healthy sum of money for our facilities re- development plans and were able to make a significant contribution to the Roger Looker Bursary fund at the College in memory of our late Chairman. The club was very pleased to be able to elect a new Chairman in Mike Lobb. He has been involved with the club for a number of years as a player, coach and referee and prior to this he played rugby for a number of clubs and represented the Army during his military career. Although he is not an OA Mike has close links to the College which his son attends. The OAFC has changed a lot in the last couple of decades; we are now an open club offering rugby to the whole community but we are happy that we are able to maintain our close links to Dulwich College and always plan to do so. We have a number of plans for the coming seasons but the top priority is to improve the drainage on our pitches and upgrade our facilities, it will be a lot of hard work but will ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy rugby on Dulwich Common.
Hon Secretary: Owen McEntee Email: owen_mcentee @ hotmail.com Web: www.alleynianrugby.org
Another good season for the OA football club, the weather was kinder to us than some recent seasons and very few games had to be cancelled or re-scheduled. Our 1st XV are now firmly established as one of the better sides in the London 2 divisions and we have a thriving Senior and Junior sections with Saturdays and Sundays on Dulwich Common well attended. In the 2014-15 the 1st XV played in the London 2 SW division and it will be remembered as the season of the Bonus Point. We managed to secure 20 bonus points in total, far more than any other team in the league. We got 13 bonus points for scoring 4 tries or more in matches and 7 bonus points for losing by 7 points or less. Those statistics really sum up the season, we had a number of narrow losses, some high scoring losses and some big wins. In the end we finished 6th in the league with a record of 22 games played, 8 wins, 13 losses and 1 draw. The powers that be have decided that we should move over to the London SE leagues for the 2015-16 season; this does align the 1st XV with the rest of the Senior and Junior club who have been playing against the Kent sides for a number of years. The rest of the Senior club is in a very healthy position, we run 5 adult sides and it is very rare that we have to cancel a game due to lack of numbers. If you include all the players, substitutes, team managers, first aiders and other associated volunteers there are over 100 people turning out and representing the OAs most Saturdays in the season. We are able to offer adult rugby at a number of levels: serious, semi-serious, social and development. Player recruitment and retention is one of our strong points as a club. We benefit from a pathway for transitioning players from Junior to the Senior club and also every year we get a number of school leavers from the College keen to continue their rugby in Dulwich.
Owen McEntee
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