Winners for February 2010
1st Prize (£75):
Linda Barter
2nd Prize (£25):
Steve Menham
3rd Prize (£20):
Pete Ashmore
Supermarine Sports
and Social Club
Supermarine Road
South Marston
Swindon
Wilts SN3 4BZ
Tel: 01793 824828
Fax: 01793 820410
Club History
The club started life in 1958 as a works team from the Vickers Armstrong factory at South Marston near Swindon. The Vickers factory built the Supermarine Spitfire at the site before, during and after the Second World War and this association with such an icon of British history is maintained through our current name and through a 20ft mural of a 1944 FXIVE Spitfire emerging from the clouds on the wall of our players lounge bar.
The founder and driving force behind the rugby club, and indeed the sole reason the club survived for many years, was a gentleman by the name of Bob (NS) Little. Bob stayed active within the club until his death at the ripe old age of 93 in November 1993. His picture adorns the wall of the Bob Little Bar in the clubhouse today.
The first pitches were on the Airfield where the Spitfire trials were carried out and remained so until the land was purchased by Honda in 1978. In 1980 Vickers Properties sold off the remainder of their holding at South Marston, including our clubhouse, for industrial development. Vickers furnished us with a purpose built clubhouse in its own grounds which included 3 rugby pitches as well as football, cricket, bowls, tennis and archery facilities but as part of this arrangement we had to drop the name ‘Vickers’ and so Supermarine Rugby Club was born. Since we moved onto the new site in 1985 the football and bowls clubs have become independent and, sadly, we have seen the demise of cricket and tennis.
The biggest change for us at Supermarine came in the summer of 2004, when we became masters of our own destiny by acquiring the freehold of the site, from our then landlords. This gave us the confidence to go forward and build a bigger and brighter future for everyone involved with the club and we can now boast floodlighting to a very high standard on our main pitch, a full size lighted pitch for training and have just embarked on construction of a new gymnasium.
There are numerous other milestones that have occurred over the last 50 years, but probably the key ones have been the start of our mini / junior section in 1975 and the birth of our ladies section in 1990.
The Mini and juniors started in 1975 with a handful of youngsters who were the offspring of the senior players. They have gone from strength to strength and now field teams at every age group up to colts. They are also affiliated to London Irish under their community rugby scheme.
The ladies section was formed in 1990 by a group of girls who, fed up with hockey, came and asked if they could try rugby. We, of course, welcomed them with open arms and they have gone on to become our most successful section in terms of representative honours at regional and national levels.
These two later additions to the Club have both enjoyed International recognition and above the bar in the players lounge hangs a full Scottish Ladies International shirt and a Welsh Exiles Junior representative shirt.