Welcome to the August Edition
Happy August, schools are broken up, many are heading on holiday and pre-season training is getting or is underway already! With much to do as we prepare for the new season, this month I’m taking a slightly different approach, exploring a topic which is on our mind.
We are thinking, we need your ideas…
Our marketing causes me endless hours of thought and brain ache. I hear constantly “I didn’t know about …..” or “I would have supported if I had known” and I try to understand why. I don’t mind how our members find out about things, as long as they do, however I hear it on repeat time and time again that we don’t get our messaging “out there”, to both members, supporters and the general public.
What I do know is that people want to be communicated to in a certain way which reflects how they want to receive information. Divesting our marketing effort can deflect or dilute the quality of what we want to get our there in one format or another, we all have our favourites after all. AI is good and often saves time and makes tasks much quicker, but yet we have grumbles and complaints that some of what has been produced is too obviously AI both the written word and the imagery, which then can turn people away and they disengage. See example to the right —->
Often our imagery needs to be amended for the different online and offline formats which takes a significant amount to time amend, often to tight deadlines, deadlines are driven content availability and the event/match etc. As these are mainly run by volunteers, or paid employees who have conflicted priorities, they only know what they know and need to publish quickly and move onto the next thing which means we collectively miss things or platforms.
Let me dive into what we do, today…
Our socials:
In today’s world social media is apparently the way to get information to those who need or we want to see it, the numbers of “followers” certainly indicates this is relevant, however measuring engagement is tougher. We know we aren’t hitting the right notes and we know everyone isn’t on every platform, let alone do we have people on every platform who could help get our messaging out there. With audiences having a short attention span, not a criticism I am the same, short and sharp is the order of the day. I spoke to one of our sponsors about this challenge, publishing content constantly and they said to me “what you are requiring becomes a full time job!” Sadly we cannot afford to employ someone just to look after our socials let alone reply to all the comments with a well educated answer.
Please note, all the pages/entities out there badged “Harlow Rugby Club” are not under our central control and we can’t post/update them. Some are old and retired but we cannot close them down.
Facebook
Our internal Facebook Group (864 members) is primarily for our club members and their close supporters (parents, former players etc) anyone can post what they are doing around the club, but few do. Not everyone is on Facebook let alone in the group, this feels to me that it is the main place I find out about what we are up to. With this not being seen by everyone at the club, our members are missing out on the key information published in there.
Our External Facing pages Rugby Facebook Page (5300 followers), Harlow Rugby Club Functions & Events (3400 followers) are centrally managed and primarily for those who support the club or want to know what is happening at the club but aren’t necessarily members, these are supplemented by pages managed more closely by the teams/sections such as Harlow Ladies Rugby (740 followers), Harlow Girls Rugby (240 followers), Harlow Mixed Ability Rugby (291 followers).
Instagram
Primarily for those who support the club or want to know what is happening at the club but aren’t necessarily members, we have harlowrufc (2716 followers) and hrufclattonpark (297 followers) along with a number of other pages that come back when you search for Harlow Rugby. This platform is so closely linked with Facebook now, those with accounts can get to Facebook easily although reversing that process isn’t as simple.
X.com (Formally Twitter) 
Likewise this platform for those who support the club or want to know what is happening at the club but aren’t necessarily members. The X platform seems to be getting less popular and toxic behaviour seems to be driving people and traffic away, nonetheless it’s still a massive platform. We have a few pages but they aren’t used a great deal @harlowrugby (570 followers), @harlowrugbyclub (836 followers) although we haven’t posted much on these platforms recently.
Paying for exposure
With Facebook, Instagram and X we can pay to increase the coverage and promotion of our posts direct to the platforms, this doesn’t seem to have increased the footfall in the past or increased revenue we generate. We do have a deal with YourHarlow who promote our events on their web pages and Facebook page, Instagram and X.com which does appear to raise the awareness of our club in Harlow. I can’t put financial figures on this, but I do receive more comments back that this is where people outside the club find out about our club.
Emails
When we send out our email messages to members and supporters, they are criticised for being to long, because we try to cram too much in not knowing what people have already seen, most think that email is free, but the reality is you need a mailing application, which you need to pay a subscription for, ours is about £19 a month. Even then we have approx 1450 on our mailing list, only 423 – 29%, opened our recent message on International Tickets and (at the time of writing) and 557 – 38%, opened our Rampages email message: https://harlowrugby.club/rampages-july-2026/ we know we are missing people, but not necessarily who.
WhatsApp
We have set up WhatsApp groups, although I keep getting banned from WhatsApp because we want to add/send to to many people to the groups or communities. These are used for communications to those involved in Matches/Training, Club Events, First Aid, Referees etc. We know they aren’t complete, we send invites but we depend on people accepting them. We also depend on those in these groups cascading (forwarding) messages to those in their teams. You can get prepared for the new season and stay up to date with our 1st XV Match Day updates by joining this WhatsApp group. https://chat.whatsapp.com/KleeoPXmNnbFlubRhLlwqO
Our Website
Critiqued for being out of date and hardly visited. https://harlowrugby.club/ We combined the Latton Park site and the Rugby Club site, but we think these serve different audiences, nonetheless hardly anyone visits them for information and we need it to share compliance information such as our club policies and key documents. https://harlowrugby.club/documents/ to avoid failing audits.
Match Day Programme
Last season we developed a match day programme, you can see an examples 1st XV here and u11s here. Anyone can create these for the teams they are close to, they are fun to create and look great!
Offline
Away from the online world what is happening? We have supported fetes, fayres, held stalls in the Water Gardens and we will be at the Harlow Town Show. We advertise in CM Connection Magazine once a month which is hard copy and goes through peoples letterboxes and online here. We would like to put leaflets through doors in the newer areas of Harlow to help us raise our awareness across the town. We are getting leaflets/flyers printed to support this effort and we would like some help getting these put through letter boxes. We put posters up in the club, but we know people just walk past them most of the time.
Electronic Screens
We have different screens across the club house and outside facing the roundabout. Each needs a slightly different format and quantity of detail to grab the attention. These also become relevant and obsolete in different timescales.
Content – Match Reports, Photos, Video clips
We know match reports are well read and that match action photos from games are viewed by many. These take a significant amount of time to create and publish and then the reports beyond our 1st XV are relevant to a sub-section of our those online and for youth teams come with some restrictions on what can and can’t be published. (and of course in any report criticism of a referee will result in disciplinary action from both Essex RFU and our club). These are therefore inconsistent and the demand often outstrips the supply.
For the coming season we have Veo’s for recording 1st XV, Ladies, 2nd XV & Colts, Under 14s & 3rd XV. This is some content we will have that we need some key editors to snip and post for us.
Where next
So where do we focus our effort? There are gaps in what publish because of a lack of knowledge, awareness of topics or just the time available. Let me know what you think where should we go, is there a platform out there you can help us get engaged with? Thoughts, comments and ideas all welcome. chairman@harlowrugby.club
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New for you this month
Partnership Announcement: Utility Warehouse 
Harlow Rugby Club is excited to team up with Utility Warehouse (UW)…. and club member Ray Meerloo! This new partnership scores a win-win: it secures an ongoing revenue stream for the club and helps our members tackle household bills. Your interaction with Ray, could earn the club up to £150 – you save, we earn! Take a look here
Are you signed up for the new season?
Players will have received an email from the RFU about registering for the new season in GMS. Please could you take the action requested which will allow you (or your son/daughter) to play this coming season. Subject to your membership being up to date, which you can sign up for at the same time. If you don’t get the email, please go into GMS https://gms.rfu.com/GMS/Account/Login (switch to the player’s profile, not your own, if needed) click the green box in the middle of the page, follow the instructions/answer the questions. If you can do this without being chased, you will save our managers and coaches a heap load of admin time, they may even stay sain and continue to volunteer and help our club. Thank you so much!
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Looking back over July
2026 Lit Super Sevens – Men’s Social
Congratulations to the Harlow Players Bailey Albert, Rhys Eynon, Owen Eynon, Jayden Kempthorne, Freddie Matthams who helped Ongar win the Lit Super 7s Social Series this summer.
Summer Touch
Our summer touch has now come to an end. Over the period of time post exams and before preseason players from mini to colts, boys and girls each Wednesday have played rugby in mixed teams giving players the opportunity to mix and be coached on-field by older players who benefited with tries by players in the minis counting double . The round robin format enabled everyone just to have fun and throw the ball around on a summers evening. When it was very hot, buckets of water, many many water bottles were available and we varied the tempo and style of the games to avoid overheating.
This very much supported our #OneClub approach, providing players from across the age grades to get to know each other and have a bit of fun. Thank you to Sammy Harman who stepped in to run this on the weeks I was unable to attend.
Events
This July we hosted a number of events including weddings, if you would like more details about hosting a wedding or other event at Harlow please contact Hayley Adams to discuss available dates. More information available here: https://harlowrugby.club/hire/
We hosted many of the Football World Cup games, although Argentina managed to knock out England, England we able to strike striaght back in the rugby the following Saturday. Great to see many people supporting our national teams
Afternoon Tea
Thank You 
A big thank you to Will from Gottschalk who gave us the use of a digger and Chris Ellis who spent the day digging a trench ready for cabling to be laid to improve connectivity to the score board and entire club. Well done folks your club spirit is strong.
Volunteers Day
A big hand to all our volunteers who helped at the clean up the club day. Lots of work was completed making the place look better for us all. Thank you!
If you can spare some time and anytime suitable for you, we have more benches to sand and paint and a number of odd jobs that need to be done. please contact Taylor Harvey clubsupervisorhrufc@gmail.com and arrange a time to paint fences, trim bushes or whatever you fancy doing.
Water Gardens & Old Harlow
In the later part of July, we have run promotional events at the Water Gardens and at Old Harlow Paddling Pool, on one of the hottest days of the year. A big hand to Danny Fitz, Becca Middleton, AJ, Bella, Amy Woods, Gareth Rawlings and the U12, U14 girls and everyone who popped by to say hello.
Saracens Rugby Camp
We have just finished hosting the Saracens training camp for our young players. 40 kids were coached in the Saracens way but Saracens coaches including our very own Ben Creasey.
Lots of fun had by all, roll on the next camp and all the summer rugby we can fit in before the season starts in September.
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Looking forward to August
80s vs 90s Night!
Which decade comes out on top? Dust off your leg warmers, shell suits and dancing shoes for a night packed with the biggest hits from the 80s and 90s!
Friday 7th August 7:00pm – 1:00am – 2-for-1 drinks from 7pm–9pm
FREE ENTRY – Over 18s only
Expect non-stop classics from artists like Wham!, Madonna, Queen, Spice Girls, Oasis, Take That, Snap!, Whitney Houston, Backstreet Boys and many more!
Whether you’re Team 80s or Team 90s, this is your chance to sing your heart out, hit the dancefloor and enjoy a great night with friends.
Which decade will win? Join us and decide!
George Michael Tribute Night
Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating one of the greatest music icons of all time. Sing along to all the classic hits, including Faith, Careless Whisper, Freedom! ’90, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and many more!
Saturday 15th August – Show starts at 8:30pm Over 18s only
Whether you’re a lifelong George Michael fan or just love an incredible live performance, this is a night you won’t want to miss.
Gather your friends, grab a drink and enjoy a fantastic evening of timeless music and great entertainment.
Meet the Chair
Harlow Inflatable Family Fun Day
28–31 August HARLOW- Summer holidays are made for days like this! We’re bringing Inflatable Family Fun Days to Harlow and we’d love to see you there!
FREE Minion Meet & Greet, 3 Hours Unlimited Inflatables, Just £10 per child, Strictly ages 2–12, Adults & non-bouncers FREE
Trampolines, Bumper Cars, Hook-a-Duck, Extra activities charged separately. Food & Drinks Available
Session Times: 10:30am–1:30pm & 2:00pm–5:00pm
No pre-booking required – simply turn up and pay on the gate! Don’t forget… we’ll be running our usual giveaway before the event! Invite your friends!
Pre-season Friendlies 
A couple of pre-season friendlies for the diary…
Saturday 22nd August – Two games!
1pm Kick off Harlow Rams v Billericay – Home
3pm Kick off Harlow 1st XV v Finchley – Home, we will meet Finchley later in the league season.
Friday 4th September – 7:30pm Kick off Harlow Rams v Millwall Home
Saturday 5th September – 1st XV & Charity Games
Alongside these games we are able to offer Free Prostate Cancer Screening 11am to 3pm, for more details take a look here: 2026 09 05 Prostate Screening
Kick off from midday: Charity Rugby Tournament for Prostate Cancer at Latton Park. As many will know Ben White was diagnosed with this a few months ago, he is probably one of the lucky ones and caught it early without any warning signs just a specific blood test. We want to make more awareness of this. There will be several different games going on throughout the day If you fancy a run contact Tasha Stallman 07774 496655 / tashastallman@msn.com
3pm Kick off Harlow 1st XV v Southend
The league season kicks off with:
12th September v Brentwood – Away kick off 3pm
19th September v Cheshunt – Away kick off 3pm
26th September v Thurrock – Home kick off 3pm
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How can you help?
Club Blazers available!
Get yourself ready for the new rugby season with a club blazer. The first orders have already arrived. If you are interested please contact us at the Ram Shack for more details.
You can donate your old kit to the Ram Shack, the proceeds from all sales are donated to the Ken Spooner fund for the development of Mini and Youth Rugby.
Scrum Club
The Scrum Club is a new era of support for the Harlow Rugby.
Supporting community-funded rugby initiatives helping to fund youth development, club facilities, and the long-term health of the sport in Harlow.
The Scrum Club is primarily a regular subscription membership programme, giving supporters a simple, meaningful way to invest in the club’s future.
More information is available here: https://harlowrugby.club/scrum-club/
Contact Jim Beavan with any questions scrumclub@harlowrugby.club
300 Club
August’s winners will be announced shortly. Will you win this month?
Participation in our 300 Club has dropped and we are keen to rebuild the members and the prize money.
Do you know what the 300 Club is? The “300 Club” is a form of fundraising for HRUFC whereby each member is allocated a permanent number, from 1 to 300, and entered in a monthly draw. Members and Non-Members aged 16 and over, pay £5 per number monthly by direct debit and can select as many numbers as desired.
Each month three numbers will be selected at random to win monetary prizes. More info & sign up here: 300 Club Sign Up
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Open & Urgent Roles
- Help Leafleting – We have been notified that several people across the town don’t realise that we have a rugby club at the heart of Harlow. To raise our profile over the summer we plan to deliver leaflets to several of the newer areas in Harlow as well as some of the areas around our club if you are willing to help deliver these leaflets please get in touch and we can assign an area to you.
- Grants Manager – Can you help us research and apply for grants? We have some key strategic projects where grant funding will be the difference between making these come alive or they remain ideas. There are resources available, but we need someone to coordinate applications. If you’re interested, you’ll have plenty of support from the Executive. As examples,
- Grants are available for us to take opportunities hosting community events where the funding can be split across organisation, an event leader and facility rental.
- Facility upgrades, in some cases grants are available for us to improve our facilities, this often involves matched funding.
Urgent: Rugby Management Roles
We are currently seeking a Chair of Rugby, but this role can be split into manageable parts. Could you help in one of these areas? If so, please get in touch with me.
- Schools Co-ordinator – Help us develop a vibrant schools programme, secure funding, and oversee its operation.
- Walking Rugby Co-ordinator – Could you help us re-launch walking rugby for the club?
- Under 16s Head Coach – Our side folded in 2025/26 and we are looking resurrect the side like a phoenix being reborn. We have a core group of players that need a head coach to give them direction and help them grow participation and recruit new members from schools and the local community.
- Chair of Rugby – Oversee the above roles and help shape the future of rugby at Harlow. I am happy to mentor you or even share the responsibilities as you settle in.
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Personal note
I was very sadden to hear of the passing of Dougie Brown. Dougie as been a key part of our finance team for many years making sure we get things done and we are aware of any financial issues. We will miss him in his day to day role and his face around the club. Rest in Peace Dougie.
His funeral will take place at Parndon Wood crematorium at 15:30 on Tuesday 4th August with the wake taking place at the club afterwards. Flowers will be family only but if anyone wishes to make a donation you can do so via Daniel Robinsons with money going between the RNLI and the British Heart Foundation.
It’s great to have had meetings recently with our Mixed Ability and Under 15s. Our under 15s now have a tour in the making and our mixed ability team are looking to build on their trip to Coventry and grow their membership. Please remember this is your club if you want to make something happen for your team, section, group, please consider this your invite to make something happen and make a positive contribution. If you need some help, please ask and we can help point you in the right direction.
I look forward to seeing you around the club soon.
Paul Eynon
Chair, Interim Chair of Rugby, Coaching Co-Ordinator, Colts Coach
