Attendees at 2024 AGM were unanimous in their gratitude to outgoing Director of Rugby Steve Murley recognising the fantastic contribution made over the last fourteen years.

Steve has taken us on quite a journey since taking up the gauntlet in the 2010-11 season:

• Four promotions, three achieved as Champions, that has taken the Saints to the highest level the Club has ever achieved.
• Six County Cup Finals, seven if you count the year lost to Covid.
• St Austell RFC finally won the County Cup for the first time in the Club’s history in 2017, and then again in 2023.
• Two National Cup semi-finals, on both occasions the Saints were just one score away from a Twickenham Final.
• Saints players are now regularly picked for Cornwall without first having to depart for so called “bigger” Clubs to gain representative honours.

This on-field success has been over a decade in the making and with three senior squads where 90% of the players have come through the St Austell Youth Section, making it is a whole club achievement.

Chair Paul Hayes said:

From the outset our aim was to make St Austell RFC “the most professionally run amateur Club in Cornwall”.

The “Saints Way” is an approach we are all immensely proud of and it has delivered success on the field, stability off it and laid the foundations for a sustainable future that will enable St Austell RFC to continue to grow and progress.

I have known Steve for nearly 40 years – as a team mate, a work colleague at ECC, a Captain, a coach and a DOR. Most of all as a friend and of course Godfather to my son Anthony.

Throughout it all he has been steadfast and loyal to the Club, not only through the good times but also through periods where we have struggled, he will be greatly missed by everyone at Tregorrick.

It really is an end of an era, Steve has been the foundation upon which today’s Saints is built. A whole generation of players have grown up under Steve’s leadership and it cannot be underlined enough how much we owe to his vision, leadership, dedication and hard work.

The dug-out will feel a very strange place without Steve alongside me!

On behalf of everyone at Tregorrick, I would like to say thank you for everything and we wish you every success in your new role as Chair of the CRFU.

This is the first time someone from St Austell RFC has held such an esteemed position at the County and it underlines just how far we have come as a Club.

St Austell RFC’s loss is undoubtedly the County’s gain!