Tennent's Caledonia Region League Division 1
Grangemouth - Saturday 14th December 2019
Grangemouth Stags 0, Orkney RFC 31

On Friday 13th December 2019 Orkney set off on their travels for the final Caledonia regional league game before the festive break. This was a trip to face Grangemouth Stags, old friends of Orkney rugby and passionate supporters of the Orkney sevens tournament for over quarter of a century.

Club president Brian Lanni chose to make this fixture his official supporters trip and had rounded up a number of characters, club officials and ex-players to join the team on the journey south.
 
The travelling squad showed several changes from the previous two fixtures this was mainly due to work commitments, injury and unavailability. However due to squad depth this season a strong group still left Orkney on the Northlink ferry to Aberdeen.

Congratulations to Steven Budge who won the October Raffle for the ORFC Anniversary Book signed by SRU President, Dee Bradbury and the book’s authoring group. Steven is pictured receiving his prize from Ian Carse.

The winners of the two other books in that month’s raffle were Jim Winterburn from Stromness and Willie Stewart from Kirkwall.

If you want to grab yourself a copy  for a Christmas present, they are on sale at The Orcadian Bookshop or contact Ian Carse on O7415 680706

Thanks to the generosity of the crowd we were able to put two books into Saturday’s raffle and still come away with a small surplus for the Book kitty. A raffle winner in the Clubhouse was Brian Wood with number 320 and the other winning ticket was number 356, but that person was not in the Clubhouse, so the Book has been set aside for collection by them. If this is your ticket please contact Ian Carse on O7415 680706, show him your ticket and the book will be yours. If nobody claims the book by 31 December the book will go back into stock.

A picture of our Charity Partners Go Go Olive’s products are shown here and to date we have raised over £80 through our weekend sales and we are looking to add to that total during this week.

You will see these lovely potential Christmas presents are in our club colours and the lovely characters can be purchased either by contacting Ian Carse on O7415 680706 or by going into Hume Sweet Hume’s shop in Kirkwall.

On Saturday 30th November Orkney RFC hosted the 5th and final event of the Caledonia North Girls Series. Previous Series Events had been held at Caithness, Highland, Moray and Aberdeen with the Orkney girls attending these events in a partnership with Caithness RFC.

Orkney’s event was attended by over 70 girls from Caithness, Moray/Huntly, Orkney and Shetland. Held at the KGS, 3 pitches were set out for U18s, U16s and U14/U12s. The Series emphasis is heavily lent towards player development looking to give every girl as much playing time as possible. With this in mind teams were made up from an amalgamation of all the clubs players and games were played across all the age groups. This ensured every girl played a minimum of 40 minutes of rugby.

Club Chairman Gary Nicolson commented:

 As a first of its kind for Orkney RFC the event was hailed as a great success and thanks go to all the volunteers and players for the fantastic display of girls rugby. Special thanks must go to the referees and to the Parents, ORFC's cook Ellie and the Orkney Dragons who provided food ensuring no one went home hungry.

Girl’s training takes place on Monday nights 6-7:30pm at the Market Stance Riding Centre. Open to all girls aged 10 upwards.