Achieving the impossible dream

On the field success can be measured like a CV, twice promoted to the premiership, Powergen Shield winners, current Yorkshire Regiment Trophy winners — making us the best in Yorkhire.

Respect is very much for the town and the people that built us.

Throughout any discussions about where we may have to play our directors have been insistent I would even say passionate that we keep Clifton Lane as our spiritual home and a base for amateur rugby and as a thriving community facility for the town that forged us.

We were among the first professional sports teams to build into players contracts a commitment to working in the local community. It’s a commitment we don’t need to enforce as they are always willing.

At time of writing Clifton Lane is home to ten different charities and community groups and wherever we may have to play we intend to show we love Rotherham by keeping it that way.

With our RuggerEds group we have children as young as three learning our sports core values of respect, teamwork and most importantly fun!

Non-existent just over a decade ago, the Rotherham Phoenix amateur club turns out two senior teams, a vets team, a colts team and teams for all junior and younger age groups. Touch rugby is proving to be an unqualified success for both men and women and as we do at the Titans, Rotherham Phoenix are passionate about developing Phoenix Park on Herringthorpe into a widely used community facility and through it and their teams allowing sport for all.

Inspiration is something we hope we give to our town.

The mindset of ‘getting on with it’ is in our DNA at Clifton Lane generated by the men in our Vice Presidents Association who played their rugby for Spurley Hey against grammar schools and went on to play while working in the steelworks of this town. On a Tuesday you can see these men fixing up the old girl that is Clifton Lane and in our Harry’s Bar you can see their younger selfs looking back at you out of old team photos. They built the club physically and in mindset, they embody the true spirit of Rotherham and do just ‘get on with it’ and inspire still all of us at the club to excel.

The Titans have been described as the “impossible team” that based on budgets and facilities should not achieve what they do. We hope we inspire Rotherham people especially our young people that even if you don’t have the big bucks or great ground by taking what you’ve got and getting on with it you an achieve. That having the desire and putting in the hard work you can succeed when others say you shouldn't be able to.

We hope we do our bit to promote Rotherham. We’ve generated thousands of column inches in the press across the UK and Ireland, our fast flowing rugby and achievements in reaching the promotion play offs has seen us live on Sky ten times in the last 16 months, we’ve been subject to special features on Sky’s ‘The Rugby Club’ and had Radio 4 broadcast a half hour documentary on our ground breaking community work.

We have a strong squad, an exciting new young head coach in Mark Jones and this season we will show we love Rotherham by showing the world this season what our town is all about. We hope we do you proud.

Mick Sylvester, events manager Rotherham Rugby Club