Colchester Kings’ Right Royal First Season
Sam Biscoe was a professional dancer when he was persuaded to trip the light fantastic on the rugby pitch with Wessex Wyverns
When he moved from Southampton to Peterborough, he joined the Northampton Outlaws team. Later, arriving in Colchester, he found there was no local LGBTQ+ team to join. The answer, he decided, was to set one up and a year ago Colchester Kings was launched.
Hosted at the Colchester club, they have just celebrated their first birthday and held their first season awards, having beaten Northampton Outlaws 26-19 at home in their last game of the season.
From 30 to 100+
From the original 30 who turned up for that first session, their ranks have reached over 100 playing members and supporters. Now, they have enough players for two training groups, with the hope to expand to two teams in the future.
“We have the Purples, which is more gameplay focused, and the Golds, who learn skills and drills and is the basis of a development side, and 90% are, like I was at the outset, completely new to rugby,” says Sam.
“We launched on June 1st last year and have been playing friendlies against other inclusive teams and also competed in IGR’s European tournament, the Union Cup. In the new season we will be entering the IGR leagues for the first time. We were very much welcomed at Colchester RFC’s Raven Park, and they have been incredibly supportive.”
With Openreach their major sponsors, alongside Secure My Booking and Essex based companies Birkett Long Solicitors and Blue Sky Printing, the Kings are looking now for further commercial partnerships and grants.
Pride in the shirt
Their founder and Chairperson, Sam says he had never envisaged playing rugby and took it up at the age of 30. He has loved the past seven years playing and is happy to fill any position needed. At the Union Cup he played variously front row, second row, flanker, centre, and even full back. Not a bad repertoire for the former dancer, who is now head of marketing for a theatre.
This month (August) players will be out in force in their purple and gold club colours taking part in Colchester Pride. With such a rapid rise in numbers, and having introduced rugby to so many new players, they have a great deal to be proud of.
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