They are a great club with a superb tradition – they started out as a Christian organisation trying to use rugby to give kids something to do, and they’ve kicked on from there.

They’re extremely exciting, have some terrific young players, and if you allow them to play, they’ll tear into you, as one or two teams have found out already.

It was a great game at their place in September and if it’s half as exciting as that, the crowd are in for a real treat.

Today we also celebrate the Burns fixture, one I love, and it’s a shame we couldn’t have a Burns evening – but hopefully Graeme Cook, who was the main instigator of it, will be back next year!

However, we have the superb piper, Harry Gow, who will also do the address to the haggis.

He’s a wonderful musician and a superb advocate of Burns – the latter was all about speaking out for the ordinary person in language they can understand.

He wrote his poetry in basic Scottish which was the word of the peasant, and I like to think Rams have an affinity with that because we speak out for the average person.

This leads me to comment on the continuing discontent in English rugby, with the looming possibility of an SGM calling for the head of CEO, Bill Sweeney.

The problem we have is a lot of people think it’s a case of bad apple – it’s actually a bad barrel.

We need to sort the barrel out – that’s the structure – and allow clubs to believe they’re being heard.

When they’re being represented by a 62-person committee, they don’t feel like they are, don’t feel close to it.

What we need to do is reduce the committee, which holds the executive to account, and make it more accountable to the people who are running the grassroots of the sport – (chairman) Andy (Lynch) and I believe we need to stop calling for people’s heads and look at the structure.

There is a review underway which has been set in place by the Council – we’d have preferred it to be independent rather than instigated by them and a sense they’ll be marking their own homework – but we’d like to see 12 regions, each with a representative onto a national council which represents the members and holds the executive to account.

That way clubs will know who their representative is, and they can lobby directly to them to get change. I think it would make a big difference to the game.

There can be sub-committees for aspects of the sport like refereeing, pro, facilities, laws etc, and people can be invited onto those before feeding into the 12.

In short, we need to get rid of something which is so outdated nobody in their right mind would have designed this structure – the RFU turns over around £200m and we’ve got a 62-person committee in a mutual organisation running it as the game tries to continue becoming more professional. It’s crazy.

On a happier note, we are delighted to have Rheavendors as our ball sponsor today.
Sponsors make such a difference, not just financially, but the moral support it gives to the team and the club.

So, a huge thank you to Rheavendors, who’ve been behind the club for a while now – Steve (Rossington) has been fantastic in terms of his support, long may that continue, and long may we give lots of local businesses the feel-good factor of getting involved with a great community organisation.

Elsewhere around the club our Colts head to London for their National Cup last 16 clash tomorrow.

Rosslyn Park is a great place to go, it’ll be tremendous playing on their AGP, and our lads have been great both last season and this.

They’ve matured, so hopefully they can make it into the last eight – anyone who can get up there with some blue kit on, it would be great to have you shout the boys on as Dave, Glyn and all the team would be delighted to see you there.

Finally, we had more than 3,000 people attend the two Friday Night games before Christmas, and I cannot say enough about what a difference our crowd makes – although it’s not just at OBR, it’s also away.

So, I ask everyone to give the boys that little extra edge. Be polite – respect the referees and our guests – but shout, bang those boards and make lots of noise.

The players truly appreciate it, and I don’t think a lot of the supporters who come along realise just how much the boys talk about how much they love playing at Old Bath Road.

There’s a song sung at the end of every coach trip back which is sung to the tune of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ – it ends up with ‘Mike Tewkesbury, Old Bath Road’ – and it shows how the guys feel about their home ground.’