Club History

There is a delightful photograph in the Clubhouse’s Bonberry Bar of the 15 men who turned out for the new Thames Valley Rugby Club in February 1922. They all look very smart in white kit, with intricately laced boots and neatly parted hair. They had survived WWI, and Captain R.K. Dibb was in charge. In their middle sits R. A. ‘Roy’ Bonberry, who was influential in founding the Club, and guided its development for the next 60 years. Could any of them have imagined, that nearly 100 years later their new club, and their opponents that day, would still be battling for supremacy. The opponents were Berkshire Wanderers, who eventually became Reading, followed in turn by Thames Valley becoming Maidenhead in 1965. For the record, the Wanderers won the first game and the next two, before Thames Valley emerged triumphant February 1923, winning 6-3.

That first game was played on the Cookham Football Club ground, but soon afterwards Valley’s home pitch was based on the Bray Show Ground, which lay on the flat ground adjacent to the Bray Road, across the fields and The Cut from the current pitches, and this remained the Club’s home until 1926, when they moved to a permanent ground in Kidwells Park. This historic event is commemorated by the RBWM by an information board at the entrance to the park. Kidwells remained home for nearly 40 years, the venue for famous encounters with some wonderful teams of yesteryear, such as the Royal School of Mines, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the Chartered Bank of India, the Coldstream Guards, and the all important Great Western Railway RFC. They turned up very early on, thus proving to the committees of clubs from Somerset and beyond, that we have always been part of the South West of England.

Roy Bonberry proved to be an influential figure. Over Christmas 1921, he had organised a game in aid of the Lord Mayor’s Poor Box, on Cookham Moor, this proved so popular that a meeting followed in the Royal Exchange (now Malik’s) in Cookham. Jobs were apportioned to volunteers, and off they set to get things established. Bolstered by the popularity of Maidenhead’s weekend night club scene (there were a number of them between the Bridge and Boulter’s lock) many players found it easy to combine a game in the afternoon with debauchery down by the river. The Club blossomed, started an ‘A ‘ XV and everything went smoothly until Hitler brought things to a standstill in 1939. Bonberry got things going again in 1948, and are currently playing in our 95th year.

We face this milestones with a superb clubhouse and a thriving membership, three senior sides and a vast host of youth members and their families, all subscribing to the belief that rugby brings something special to one’s life, and to the way one lives it. What would those 15 young men of the 1922 side think if they could see it all now on a Saturday afternoon, or better still a Sunday morning. Bonberry himself would have been delighted, for he was still the President in 1983, when he passed away after some 60 years in office, his contribution to the Club will always be remembered through our Bonberry Bar.

He had watched over a club that had moved to Braywick in 1966/67, built a proper clubhouse, and was running six and sometimes eight senior XVs every Saturday, together with a Colts XV, much loved by the more senior players, a team started and run by the irrepressible Alan Crosland, which helped to prepare the foundations for today’s very successful youth teams. Roy was always supported by a number of dedicated men and women working behind the scenes. Whilst it is success on the field of play that retains the memories, and always takes the praise, such success could not have been achieved without the help of so many unsung heroes and heroines, and their successors of today.

When the club made the move to Braywick, Mike Davis skippered the 1st XV, and he handed over to Martyn Gulliford, a flanker, who demanded dedication towards training and playing from his teams. This led in the 1970’s to a period of wonderful rugby, when the 1st XV, captained now by Derek Harris, brought a standard of success to Braywick that helped force a change in attitude from rugby’s old guard, who had to take notice of developments in grass-root rugby throughout the country.