Annual Dinners have been a tradition in many Rugby Clubs and Redditch is no different.

We are fortunate to have had two very pedantic, no well organised, people who managed the dinners from the 8th in 1975 through to the 16th in 1983. Thanks to John Stott and Richard Mountford we have very detailed records from many of those dinners.

1975 was the first year that the club dinner was held in the Clubhouse. So it provided a number of new challenges to John who was the chairman of the social committee. Firstly there was the question of catering and how we could feed the thousands using the club facilities. After receiving numerous quotes Honeybourne Supply Co. was selected to provide a roast turkey with chipolata stuffing, new potatoes and vegetables. All this for the princely sum of £1.25 plus VAT per head. 4 bottles of Rose d’Anjou were bought in at 77pence and sold at £1.02. Beaujolais at £1.22 a bottle was the most popular with 11 bottles sold.

2nd challenge was how to fit 95 persons (which included 11 guests) into a clubhouse which was far smaller than the current one. It was done and the profit on the night was recorded as £6.94. Admission was a staggeringly cheap, by today’s standards, £2.00!

Guest Speaker was David Duckham, MBE, who was the current England winger, with 36 England caps and 3 Lions caps from the 1971 tour to New Zealand where he scored 11 tries.

In accepting an invitation to the North Midlands Society of Rugby Football Referees, their secretary, Alan Dunsbee, added a PS with regard to the attending referee: “PS I suggest you do not ask him to speak”

The table plan for the 1976 dinner records one S.Hindson in attendance and the guest speaker as Alec Lewis, England blind side loose forward. The ticket price had risen to £2.50 and £1.50 for students. Attendance was 81 and the price of a bottle of “Blue Nun” was up to £2.20, almost as much as the ticket. From memory a pint of lager was 28 pence in the club at the time! Profit exceeded £20 on the night.

The guest from the referees’ society was Graeme Scutt, who, at the time of writing, is still welcoming referees and visiting teams to Camp Hill rugby club, as he has done for many years.

One minor administrative problem that John had to deal with in 1976 was that the catering company went bust. Honebourne Catering who had done such a fine job in 1975, informed John of their demise 3 weeks before the night. It is teastament to his organisational skills that he had a new caterer in place within 2 days!