Next, our Owls lunch last Saturday saw 100 Owls past and present gather together to celebrate the 35th anniversary of our first big international tour to Barbados. You know it’s a special occasion when past players fly in from as far afield as Australia, Canada and Mexico. I’m delighted to say that 11 of those intrepid original Barbados tourists were able to join us for the lunch along with 12 former Owls captains.

Barbados was the first of 7 major international tours that the club embarked on traveling over 75,000 miles in the process.

To commemorate this Andy Williams and Simon Bailey kindly donated two beautiful framed pictures to the club featuring the special, blazer badges and ties that were specially commissioned for each of those tours.

The lunch was followed by our Super 2s beating Farnham RFC and crucially our 1st XV keeping our dream of winning the league alive with an epic bonus point victory over current league leaders Old Ruts RFC 26-20.

I’m pleased to report that we celebrated in true Vandals fashion with bar takings exceeding £5k for the day.