Cinderford RFC

In a forest where the trees can stop a foreign invasion and not even dancing bears can walk safely, Tykes and Titans continue to be slain, and it’s all down to the rugby men of Cinderford, refusing to know their place.

Strolling through the Forest of Dean in the later 1880s could be a hazardous business, especially if you were four Frenchmen with two performing bears. At a time when being a foreigner was enough to raise suspicion alone, when rumours spread that your bears were fed on local children, it could make the locals a bit angsty. So angsty, that a dozen of them set upon this travelling group as they made their way from Cinderford to the village of Ruardean. The bears were killed, the Frenchmen beaten, and the insult ‘Who killed the bears?’ was hurled at the people of Ruardean for time immemorial. That most of the mob were from Cinderford, was irrelevant. 

The Forest of Dean, a long stretch of our finest countryside on the western edge of England, on the doorstep of Wales, is an Aladdin’s cave of stories, both proven (such as the bears) and those needing the most elastic of imaginations. It’s where bronze age stones bleed at the prick of a pin; where mystical ‘moose-pigs’ roam the woods; where cursed tablets are found in temples; where babies haunt country houses; and where rivers have a goddess called Sabrina.

Rugby has been part of folklore in the Forest of Dean since even before the time of the bears, with the menfolk of the colleries and iron mines helping to provide the manpower for dozens of clubs to spring up, including Cinderford, a good three years before those bears probably wished they’d gone in disguise when they’d visited the woods that day. “I always tell everyone that the oak trees from the Forest of Dean were used to destroy the Spanish Armada,” says Pete Bell, the president, of Cinderford RFC, when we meet ahead of their National One clash with Tonbridge Juddians. “I always tell the story, and this is a true one, of how the men would crawl out of the pits, and then come up to the rugby club, get back on the horse and cart and travel to somewhere like Bream, Berry Hill or Yorkley, play rugby, and then go home to the families.”

The pits are long since closed, as are the ironworks – which helped give Cinderford its name, ‘cinders’ from the deposits, and ‘ford’ meaning crossing point. “Although I think there is one mine still working, but it’s not really fit for purpose or safe, and there’s no real money in it,” says Pete, whose construction company KW Bell Group are now one of the big employers in the area. “We did have Rank Xerox here, which employed 5,000 people, but that’s gone now. We’re good for construction around here, but aside from that, for anything substantial job-wise, you’re going to Gloucester.” 

A town of 8,494, Cinderford’s colourful history – which includes the last witch trial in the area, back in 1905 – is etched at different parts through the town, including a miner’s statue in the centre. But, aside from being a commuter town for Gloucester and Bristol, its spectacular surrounds – the Malvern Hills to the north, Wye Valley to the west, the Cotswolds to the east, the meandering River Severn working its way south, and the forest all around – are reason enough to reside here. 

That, and the rugby club, which stormed to the top of the National One table in the first half of the season, beating the likes of Blackheath, Leeds, Plymouth Albion, Taunton Titans and Chinnor, along the way. 

They sit fourth on the day we visit, with their run coming to an end in recent weeks, and needing a win over bottom-placed Juddians to get things back on track. 

Fourth shouldn’t be a surprise, as Cinderford are a staple of the third tier, first reaching it in 2008, getting relegated in 2016, only to return within two seasons, with a coaching team that includes current DoR Paul Morris and now head coach Clive Stuart-Smith, once of Gloucester, Exeter Chiefs, Scarlets, Leeds and Worcester. “I’ve been involved in this club since I was fifteen, I’m 60 now, so what’s that, 45 years?” says Pete. 

“I was born and bred around here, we’ve got a sizeable business in the town – me and my father – and ever since I was a boy, dad’s been involved in helping the club with sponsorship. I’ve played here too, it’s infectious, isn’t it? It’s in your blood.

“It’s a focal point, it’s the middle of town,” he says, “and, when I was growing up, it was a disco on a Wednesday, a Friday night out, rugby on a Saturday, skittles for the tour on the Sunday. The only thing you ever did on a Monday morning when you went to work was think about the rugby club and the next time you went there, it was ingrained in your life really.”

Other benefactors include The Beavis Trust. Bob and Mary Beavis had been the driving force behind the club for decades, keeping it afloat in the post-war years, with the latter a true ground-breaker as the first female secretary of a rugby club, a role she held for 50 years. Nephew Robert is still involved as treasurer. And, together, with smaller sponsors, and gate money [£15 for non-members, £8 for members], Cinderford are able to compete in the semi-professional world of National One.

“Let’s be honest though,” admits Pete. “It’s not cheap. It’s a bit like having a football club or a racehorse, I suppose. Although having a National One club is a little bit cheaper. It’s, still expensive, but we do it for the love of it really.

“We started off in a small way [with sponsorship], but as time goes on [you spend more], but how much is enough? 

“I would say the average player budget at this level is anywhere between £125k and £150k, then you’ve got your coaching staff and your physios on top of that,” explains Pete. “So I would say most clubs in National One run at a cost of anywhere between £250,00 and £300,000, that would be the benchmark cost. And that’s a lot of money.”

With little funding from the RFU, essentially only limited travel costs, and crowds around the 400-500 mark – “on a good day,” – the money comes from sponsors. “I think by and large, the vast majority of National One sides have a relatively similar playing budget,” says Pete. “And I think it’s probably too much, because we’re all stupid, because that’s what we do and we want to stay there. 

“I would love some intervention that would say, you know, ‘here’s the cap’ and you have to prove that cap and everybody would be on the same level playing field.”

There’s technically a £250,000 cap, which some clubs recently attempted, unsuccessfully, to reduce to £150,000, but Pete believes the simple concept of being paid to play is a matter of debate. “I  believe these guys don’t actually play for the money,” he says. “If you create an atmosphere, which they have got, and have a camaraderie from Monday to Sunday, then they want to play because they’re with a good bunch of boys, because it’s not their main career. 

“You can argue about this all day long,” he continues. “How much money should we put into players’ pockets and fund the team? 

“It’s their secondary career when they have to have fun because, unless they’re on that career path, to get into the academy and into the Premiership, it’s not about money.

“I suppose as a president and a benefactor – I’m not the sole benefactor – it would be nice if steps were taken to maybe become a little bit more intrusive on the numbers and bring the cost down.

“We started off getting £65k a year at this level, when we joined and that was taken away over a three-year period to literally nothing. 

“I think we get some travelling expenses, but I think the only one we can claim for is probably Darlington. So we get a couple of quid really, and that trip would cost £3k-£4k.”

Cinderford have had the likes of Callum Sheedy, Freddie Burns, Sam Underhill, Lloyd Evans and Josh Adams play on loan for them, playing a key role in development that Pete doesn’t feel gets acknowledged. “The third level of English rugby doesn’t get the credit it deserves from the RFU.

“Community rugby clubs have become semi-professional with the physio backup, it’s no good having a good set of players without the backup.

“You have to ask the RFU, where do the players come from? Those that enter the academies to create the English team? They come from community rugby clubs, they’re the lifeblood of the English team, but you get no recognition for it.”

Clive Stuart-Smith is warming the team up. Even now, at the age of 38, the head coach is continually hustling and bustling his players, sprinting to every breakdown, pushing his forwards onward with all the energy of a yappy, 20-something scrum-half. He’s still technically a player, and has played several times already this campaign, including the previous match. But right now on game day, the former England Saxon and Barbarian, has his match face on, and still has the laser focus of a professional player.

His DoR Paul Morris joined the club as second team manager, a year before Clive arrived as a player from Hartpury, back in 2013. Paul took over the reins as DoR at Christmas in 2015, replacing former Gloucester prop Andy Deacon. “It was too late to stop the relegation then really,” he says, “but I think we needed to go down to reset and sort a few things out, including the culture.

“When we came back [to National One] we did it with a record points total, something like 143 points from a maximum 150. And that was right after a tough first season down there [in level 4].”

Of the side he has out today, two are from Cinderford, with a third match-day regular out injured. “They’re all Gloucestershire boys though,” he says. “Our united [second] side is mostly Cinderford boys, but in a town of less than 9,000 people, we would not be a National One side if we had only local boys.”

As one of the few paying sides in Gloucestershire, and the rugby-rich county’s third team – behind Gloucester and Hartpury – attracting players is straight-forward enough, even if the pay is far from guaranteed. “It’s not a massive budget compared to other sides in the league and it’s restricted as pay for play,” Paul explains, “so you only get paid if you’re in the match-day twenty. If you’re not, you’re injured, or I rest you or drop you, you don’t paid. 

“It sounds brutal,” he adds, “but then it’d be churlish to moan about getting paid for rugby, when you know how hard it is to eke out a living in this sort of area.  

“Our captain works at Avonmouth docks, our loosehead is a groundworker, we’ve got a couple of offices boys, lecturers, it’s an eclectic mix.”

Reflecting the balance of the squad, they train in Gloucester on Tuesday nights, and Cinderford on Thursdays. “We get to use an AGP [Artificial Grass Pitch] and analysis suite on Tuesdays,” says Paul, “and it’s obviously easier for most of the boys.” Not least because travelling by country roads is far from easy. “It’s a difficult journey because there’s no overtaking,” says Paul. “If you want to overtake, good luck to you, that’s why there’s those yellow signs on the road telling you how many people have died.”

Paul balances Cinderford with a full-time job as a caretaker, but considers his DoR role his major job, even if it’s not the one that pays most of the bills. 

His hands are full right now, as the club go into today’s game on the back of a three-game losing streak. “The fixtures came out with Old Elthamians [who folded before the season began] on the list, and as it turned out we were following them – so whoever was playing Old Elthamians the week before, was playing us next.

“Now it’s counting against us, because every side has a week’s rest before they play us. At the start of the season it didn’t matter, but now everyone is a bit tired.

“Tonbridge are bottom of the league, but in this division, on their day, can they beat us? Of course they can, it’s even better that they haven’t played for a while. We were in a really demanding game last week [losing 27-21 away to Cambridge], we’ve had to make changes.

“It’s massively underestimated how tough this league is,” says Paul. “I’m not going to over-complain though,” he adds, “Because I think how the Championship is funded is the biggest problem. The Championship should be funded to a degree where you have fully professional sides. If the English Rugby Football Union can’t fund two professional leagues with the amount of players we’ve got, something’s wrong.”

In the stand, the wind rattles the corrugated sides, as it swirls around the field, adding a bite to an otherwise perfect winter afternoon, full of sun – as long as it’s on you. The pitch has been cut out of a hill, with a row of hunkered-down bungalows lining one side. 

Paul had highlighted that the fans expect a good scrum and mauling game, and his team duly delivers, their dominance helping them to a penalty try and then, a crossfield kick to the wing contributing to the 15-5 half-time lead. 

Aside from the occasional darting run from some of Tonbridge’s livewire backs, the forward play of Cinderford ensure the result is never in doubt, delivering a 41-5 win that puts the Forest of Dean side back in contention.

The team look disciplined and well-drilled, something that Clive can take credit for. “He’s probably the best bloke I’ve met in rugby,” says Paul. “Honesty, integrity, his work ethic, it’s ridiculous. I think my work ethic is good, but even I’ve got to bow to him.

“It’s the way he balances his life,” continues Paul. “He has a demanding work role, he has a young family and he seems to balance it all and still find time for Cinderford. Does he miss a session? Never. Is he ever not here when he’s supposed to be here and on time? Never. 

“He did his Achilles a couple of summers ago and he got a train from somewhere to Gloucester and he’d adapted this trolley which he could kneel on and then push himself three miles from the train station to where we train in Gloucester. He set himself a time, with a rucksack on his back, because it was a fitness thing for him.”

Clive doesn’t play against Tonbridge, but he’s sure to play a role in future games. “I’ll probably be playing when I’m 85,” explains Clive, when we finally speak post-match. “I think because you’re a nine, you can kind of get away with it a little bit more than if you played elsewhere. I think that’s a family trait, my dad played for a long time, I used to watch him play vets rugby.

“He’s probably my biggest supporter,” adds Clive, who balances his life with a head of marketing role at YMU Group, working with the likes of Ugo Monye and Joe Marler. 

“My parents still come to all my games even when I’m just coaching,” he continues. “Which is actually amazing really, I never really get to say it to them, but it’s incredible that they’re that driven to come and watch a game that I’m coaching at.

“My mum showed me her heart-rate monitor, this step counter watch, that she wore when we played Chinnor, and you could see the exact moment when I came on, because her heart rate then went right up. They still have that shared passion. They have been there from the beginning, all the way through.”

Although he gets a ‘few quid extra’ if he makes it on to the pitch for Cinderford, Clive’s professional days are now behind him. “It was when Esher got relegated [from the Championship in 2012], that ended a lot of playing contracts at the time,” he says. “I’d moved there thinking I had a year to use it as a springboard.

“I was confident in my ability to get myself in the shop window, even though it wasn’t a starting role. I knew I had plenty to offer from a physical and game-management stance, rather being the guy that’s going to score from halfway.”

A ruptured ACL early in his time there didn’t help his ambition, and after a brief spell at Hartpury, he joined Cinderford as a player in 2013, knowing that his working life was taking off outside of rugby.  

A sideline in putting together highlights reels for fellow professionals – which had helped them earn contracts – had seen him find work in the agency world. 

Originally coming from Gloucester, he was also keen to move back. “I kind of came back to the area to settle down,” he says, “my partner is from just off the Malvern Hills, so I was just thinking about how I could continue to pursue my love of rugby, in a capacity where there’s still a level of reward there, just kind of keeping my toe in.”

When Clive had first left Gloucestershire, it was as one of the country’s most promising scrum-halves, an age-grade international tipped by the likes of Clive Woodward, for the very top. Despite his success at age-grade level, he had a difficult obstacle to overcome at the Gloucester club, leading to him moving to the ambitious Leeds Tykes. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” says Clive. “And should I have stayed? Probably. 

“But at the time, you know, Andy Gomarsall was the England scrum-half and
I was only the young kid on the bench that never never played. 

“I still think I hold a random record for most bench minutes in the Premiership. It’s just an absurd stat that I’m not overly proud of.

“It was a very difficult year,” he says of his final season with Gloucester, “because I was going through the England ranks, but just not playing any senior rugby at all.

“It was also a glory Gloucester team, it was pretty much the old Gloucester full of internationals. I mean, the pack was just incredible, and they actually won the league by 15-odd points or something, but then lost in the play-offs to Wasps.

“I was just like everyone, when they’re 19 or 20 and you just want to play really, and I think that was always my driving force [behind the move to Leeds], just the fact that I wanted to play.

“I have the same attitude now,” he says, “I just want to play, even though obviously I’ve moved into a coaching role. But I made those decisions at the time based on the information that I had in front of me. Would I do it again? Probably, because I made a sensible decision based on what I knew.”

At Leeds, he started as first-choice. “We actually played them the other week, and Phil [Davies] and Jon [Callard], who was there when I played for them, were back there again,” he says, before continuing with the story. “In my first Premiership game, we played against Bath, and I did my MCL, so I was out for eight to ten weeks and got back at Christmas.

“I took over the reins and went to Leicester away, and did my other MCL.”

A move to Worcester also proved ill-fated. “It was probably an agent push as well, there was a monetary return there,” he says. “But for me, I wasn’t thinking along those lines, I’m just thinking ‘they’re in the Premiership and it’s a playing opportunity, I’m going to go in and have a have a credible year’.”

But warning bells rang when he didn’t even get a game during pre-season. “From the off,” he says, “you’re thinking, ‘surely everyone, gets a shot?’.”

He also faced the kind of management he was keen to avoid. “There’s never really a right or wrong, but all I value now, and it’s been in the best people I’ve come across in any walk of life – is people who just tell me as it is. 

“The worst thing you can do is not talk to them. At Worcester, there were individual issues there. That’s probably the first time I had the experience of someone saying, ‘you have to play this way, if you don’t, you’re out. 

“I actually think one mistake, or an indirect mistake, probably cost me a contract.

“We played Leicester and it was kind of the Neil Back and the big dogs era of Leicester, and we were sitting down on the bottom of the table and we lost by 60-odd points. 

“I remember, I hit a poor box kick, and it led to them catching the ball just outside the 22, leading to a penalty, and they score six phases after.”

Clive found himself the fall guy, instead of those that made the mistakes that followed. “It was very much easier to pick up on the kick, rather than the missed tackles a couple of phases later.”

But, he puts that down to a learning phase. 

A move to Scarlets followed, leading to one of his best spells, playing regularly, appearing in the Powergen Cup and again being considered in the England mix, including a call-up to the England Saxons where he would captain the side against Ireland A. “Scarlets reignited things,” says Clive. “We played with most of the Welsh squad, and I was able to just focus on being a scrum-half.

“I had to make a decision about going on that England Saxons tour, which meant I could push for England, or I could stay in Wales and look at a pathway [to international rugby] with them. 

“When England came, I just thought ‘well, let’s go for it’, but I didn’t know about the foreign player rule [restricting foreign players in matchday squads] and there were some big foreign players at Scarlets then: Regan King was sensational that year. And so I went back to the English system.”

Leaving it late to make the move, he found himself at Exeter Chiefs, pushing for promotion in the Championship. “I was going there to get promoted, that was  my only goal,” he says.

And he helped them deliver, but left to join Esher in 2010, bringing the story full circle.

For all of his game-time at the top level, when Clive looks back it was age-grade rugby that he loved the most. “The junior rugby was probably the most enjoyable, the representative stuff, because you would go away and be in a camp and you’d essentially be a professional rugby player, but with a new group. I really enjoyed the new groups that I was with. 

“And it was fortunate that I had a big say in how we would go about our business because I was often the captain in that space.”

Having been on the international pathway, does he look back at what could’ve been? “I was aware I was in an international window, but I never actually got there from a performance point of view,” he admits. “I’m not like some of my colleagues who don’t want to talk about it, and there’s always a story of why they didn’t do it. 

“Was I good enough?” he ponders. “I think I had the potential to be good enough, but I just didn’t fulfil it for numerous reasons. 

“A big part of that was moving clubs and then, I suppose, it was also how I took criticism. I’d often work harder and sometimes that was to my detriment, that I’d be working too hard, from an overtraining perspective. But I would always give it my best shot.”

That he’s still in rugby is the best barometer of his success. “I mean you always look back on your career, and think ‘perhaps if I’d done that...’ but actually, I still have a love of the game.

“I had no plans to move into a coaching role or anything like that, I just wanted to essentially play back at the grassroots at a decent standard and that’s how I ended up at Cinderford.”

A player who clearly always had a say, Clive has coached in one form or another since day one at the National Club, his analytical take on things helping them succeed during his tenure. 

“I know that we missed eighteen opportunities against Tonbridge,” he explains. “There were six, three-on-twos that we should probably put away. It’s that level of detail that I quite enjoy.

“I say it to a lot of people, but I am very passionate about where this club can go,” he continues. “We have ambition. And I would have stopped playing if it wasn’t at a standard that is a very strong level and this is certainly that.

“And the Forest of Dean is an amazing place, I love it, not just for the rugby but what it offers. And the people are fascinating too and so much about Cinderford is about the rugby club.

“The people, from bottom up to top down, from Julian and Craig, twin brothers – often don’t know who’s who – and incredible guys, they’re always doing something around the club to help someone out.”

While the club have fallen down the league pecking order since the early season, Clive doesn’t accept they shouldn’t be back up there. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be top,” he says. “I think it’s an easy thing to say, outside of this club, ‘ah, Cinderford started well, they were a bit lucky and they were always going to fall off’. 

“But, inside this group, the reasons are clear and obvious why we lost those games, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be back up there.” 

Back inside the clubhouse, more tales. Like everyone at Cinderford, chair John Wood is a good storyteller, on this occasion telling us of his time flying a Hercules down to the Falklands, the first ones to arrive after the war. “We had to refuel mid-air halfway across the Atlantic, Herc to Herc. You’d start at 22,000ft, then by the time you finished you were at 12,000ft, always coming down through cloud. You’d be about 60ft away from the other aeroplane and have to connect to this hosepipe pushed out from the other Herc, then you’d have to stay in position for about 25 minutes. It certainly kept you concentrated.”

John left Cinderford in 1961 to join the RAF, and never thought he’d come back, but he did exactly that 36 years ago, and fell straight back in with the rugby club. He reminds us of the club’s early days. “We were a first-class club at the beginning, we’d beat Gloucester, Bristol, Llanelli, Newport, London Welsh, all the big sides,” he says. “We always used to win the county cup too,” he adds. “In fact we’ve still got it, it’s there behind the bar, we’re the holders from about twenty years ago, and we’ll probably always be the holders, I can’t see it being played again.”

He talks also of the big derby games, against Forest of Dean rivals Lydney, that would draw crowds of 2,500. “The rugby club is a big part of the town,” he says. “We’re punching way above our weight for the size of the town.” 

John is 80, but still young enough to take to the field. “I think I’m the oldest referee in the country,” he adds. “I was the second oldest because there was this Italian guy in Lutterworth and he was a few years older than me, but I think he’s retired now, which makes me the oldest at 80.”

Like John, Pete [Bell] won’t ever stop supporting his club.  “You’re born into it,” says the president. “Could I ever walk away? Probably not. I could maybe walk away from being president but I don’t think we’ll ever walk away from being a benefactor of this rugby club, because it’s such an integral part of the town.

“People say ‘would you like to get into the Championship?’ Well, you’d never say no, but I’ve seen clubs get into the Championship and they plummet to level 3,4 or 5 and it can decimate a club. 

“I just wanted to make sure Cinderford was put on the rugby map. I wanted people to understand about Cinderford. And I’m quite proud that they do now.”  

Story by  Alex Mead

Pictures by  James McNaught

This extract was taken from issue 17 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.