In Memory, 2009

Taken from the 2009 newsletter:

“This newsletter was never meant to carry the sad news of so many Old Dubs skipping over the goal line, but we have an ever ageing membership and one day someone will be on his on in a pub, preferably in Wandsworth, writing about his own demise. Ian Plummer has written with feeling about his first days at the rugby club and the fact that he played with so many great players! Never forget that we have had some startling good sides over the years and many of them owe to guys who are now pensioners plus or have passed on.

It is particularly poignant therefore that we commemorate the loss of Bill Forrester. Bill was not a big man physically but he had the speed of thought and the mind essential to a very good sportsman. He was quiet but very determined when he needed to be and I have fond memories of coming home from university in Swansea and playing in Bill’s team.

Arrogance is a fault of the young and I learned from Bill that you prove yourself over the long term and that you should always respect guys who had played elsewhere at a higher standard. Bill and I did not agree on the sale of the ground in Claygate. I was then Chairman and or Club Captain and, faced with annual invasion by travellers and a ground that frequently resembled the Somme, went for the sale and the move to New Malden. Bill spoke from the heart and in memory of those had fallen in the two world wars. I am sure that the conversion of the old ground to a lush golf course rings well for him now, especially as golf became one of his favourite pastimes. Bill’s history, as told by his wife Pat, can be read here.

Bill, Harry and Peter Shillingford were postwar heroes down the club. Both Harry and Peter are now dead with Peter being buried a few weeks ago. His wife Thelma was a rugby wife and Peter helped build the old clubhouse. His story can be read here in a piece written by Thelma. He willed be missed like all our mates.”