Weymouth Rugby Club is one of the oldest Rugby football union clubs in the country and research in the County Library produced a newspaper report of the first Weymouth RFC AGM, which was held in 1872.

The club had probably disbanded during the First World War and started up again in 1923. During the 20s and 30s the club played at various grounds around the town including an old airfield at Westham, where there was a grandstand but no changing or washing facilities.

After the Second World War the club moved to a new municipal sports ground at Redlands and a small bar was established in an old nissan hut, which was shared with the Hockey and cricket clubs. The hut had originally been used as a changing facility with inadequate showers until the council provided the existing facilities almost 40 years ago with changing rooms and baths.

After the First World War in the summer of 1926 a meeting was held at the Edward Hotel on the quay to try and reform the club.

It was attended by a number of people living and working in Weymouth, including Geoffrey Taylor who had arrived in Weymouth in May 1926, directly from school to work at the Westminster Bank (which was then facing the seafront but is now a public convenience!) In 1977 he was living in Bath and was planning to watch Combe Down play Weymouth. He was unable to attend but wrote a letter to the club and enclosed fixture cards for the years 1926-1932.

Geoffrey explained in his letter he was contacted by a K H White (WRFC vice captain 1927/8) who worked in another bank who had heard that he wanted to play rugby. At the time there were a number of retired people living in Weymouth, including ex-army and navy officers who were keen for the club to start as there were no matches for them to watch. Initially the club had more vice-presidents than players and was fairly well-off financially!

Geoffrey points out that the Club’s fixture list improved quickly after the first year, if the club was short of players it could ring an army unit at the Verne, Portland or the navy at Portland.

The club initially played at a number of grounds belonging to various army or navy units and Weymouth College. In 1928 a Mr Mallows let the club have a good field next to his house in Wyke Road.

This was still being used when Geoffrey Taylor left Weymouth in July 1932 to move to Yeovil where he played until 1936 when he moved again.

Weymouth RFC was the only civilian rugby club in Dorset although the game was played by service units based at Portland and Bovington. The nearest civilian clubs were at Yeovil and Bournemouth. Nearly all the players lived in digs in Weymouth and worked there as there were relatively few Weymouth natives in the early days. The club grew a little bit each year because everybody enjoyed playing the game and soon two teams were fielded.

A sports club was born out of the shared bar in the nissan hut and in the mid 1960s the bar was moved to a room adjacent to the council changing rooms. The sports club bar flourished and eventually a small multi-purpose sports hall and a squash court was altruistically built by the sports club for use by the local community. Weymouth Rugby Club is proud of its association with the development of the Redlands sports club, which at the time, provided much needed indoor sports facilities for the local community.

The rugby club developed quickly during the 1970s due to success on the field and a happy social life off it, but there were increasing difficulties at Redlands due to ground sharing with cricket and hockey and at either end of the season the cricket outfields overlapped the rugby pitches.

Similar problems occurred with the hockey pitches and a very successful Easter Hockey Festival also competed for facilities with its rugby counterpart. Land for recreation was at a premium in Weymouth but an opportunity presented itself in the early 1980s. After a series of letters written by the club to Weymouth & Portland Borough Council the club was invited to put in a bid to lease some reclaimed land at Lodmoor directly adjacent to the country park. In 1987, after three years of negotiations, during which the club was repeatedly assured by the borough engineer that the pitches would be ‘first class’, the club signed a 50-year lease with the borough council for approximately 16 acres of reclaimed land at the bottom of Monmouth Avenue.

The club’s members worked extremely hard to raise funds which, when combined with a SW Sports Council grant and WBPC loan, enabled the club to build and open its present clubhouse in September 1987. In addition to the clubhouse the club had three full-size pitches. The clubhouse is built on a raft supported by 13 metre piles and extra piles were installed to enable expansion of the floor area up to 155sqm. During the late 1980s the club flourished and its mini & youth section went from strength to strength because of the playing and social facilities. The club adopted an equal opportunities policy and a result formed a very successful ladies team, one of the first in the area.

The club now has three senior adults teams in regular league action, a veterans team, ladies team, mini & youth players and teams from under sixes through to under 17s and under 13s and 15s girls.

The club’s membership has grown steadily to well over 500 members with a good volunteer base of over 100 filling various roles at the club.

The club holds the RFU whole club seal of approval and club mark as well as the local school sports partnerships gold partner club award. The club 1st XV won the Dorset & Wilts plate this year and head coach Paul Harding was named as the RFU adult coach of the year for 2011.