Rugby: EDF Energy Cup
United Kingdom
The EDF Energy Cup :: The EDF Energy Cup (also known as the Anglo-Welsh Cup) is an English and Welsh rugby union knock-out cup competition featuring the twelve Guinness Premiership clubs and four Welsh Regions. Prior to the 2005-06 season, the competition was open to all English clubs.
Bath Rugby vs Saracens Match scheduled:
Date: 07-02-2010
Time:17:00 until 20:00
Saracens vs Dragons
Watch Live Rugby Here
The official supporters' club of Bath Rugby was formed in January 1997. The driving force was Jake Massey, who lobbied the club relentlessly once the game went professional.
Although working closely with Bath Rugby, it remains an independent club, with an elected Committee of 11 members with four named positions, comprising the Chairman, Hon Sec, Hon Treas and Membership Secretary. The CEO of Bath Rugby is also an ex officio member of the committee. The Bath Rugby Supporters' Club (BRSC) has a membership of over 1,000 and a fully drawn up constitution. Adult members pay £5 annual subscription, £3 for Juniors and £10 for family membership. Each member receives a badge and membership card, the design of which changes at the start of each season. Members are entitled to various discounts at hostelries and retail outlets around Bath, including the Bath Rugby shop. The BRSC issues a quarterly Newsletter and has its own website at www.allez-bath.co.uk.
Social events and Q&A sessions are held throughout the year, with an AGM at the end of August and an Awards Supper held at the start of the season in September. All members are given an opportunity to vote for the players they consider are deserving of awards in various categories.
The BRSC runs at least one coach to every away game and proceeds from raffles held on these trips are donated to nominated local charities.
The BRSC is the major sponsor of the Bath Community Foundation, raising funds by means of a shirt raffle on every home match day and a competition called "Two in a Bath," which is jointly promoted with Bath Rugby. The club also sponsors a young player each year.
In 2003 the Bath Supporters Club was at the centre of a minor controversy when, unlike the Bristol Rugby Supporters Club, it did not publicly oppose the proposed merger between the two clubs [2].
Bath was the first rugby club to have its own supporters' fanzine, Everytime Ref, Everytime! (ERE), and this was then followed by similar magazines compiled by supporters at Gloucester and Leicester. The Leicester magazine folded within its first season but Gloucester's Shedhead is still going strong. ERE was launched in 1991 and continued until 1999 when its paper format was replaced by an online fanzine.
ERE was devised and produced by two Bath rugby fanatics, Glen Leat and Clive Banks. They wanted to produce something which was more in tune with modern sports fans and had a bit of comedy linked to it. During 1999, one of the founders, Leat, began to explore the possibility of turning ERE in to an online magazine. He subsequently launched a very simple site called ERE2000 in 2000. The very basic format was reminiscent of the earlier days of the paper version of ERE. Within six months he was approached by a national internet company (Rivals) and agreed to run his site through their professional network platform. This lasted for a couple of years until Rivals found they were losing too much money and so converted themselves from a general sport network into a football network.
It looked as though ERE would be homeless and Leat had to consider going back to his home-made pages similar to the days of ERE2000. Fortunately another network (Sportnetwork) offered Leat the opportunity to run ERE through their network platform. So in May 2002 ERE found its current home and has grown ever since. In the early days ERE was visited by a few hundred people a day and in the first month achieved just 82,000 page impressions. However, by March 2006 ERE was being visited by some 2000 people a day and, for the first time ever, passed 500,000 page impressions in a month.
The site has evolved somewhat since its beginnings and now mixes a combination of rugby discussion and other 'off-topic' banter. At the beginning of the 2005–2006 season, the [Bath Rugby Official Site] launched their own message board. While this site could be viewed as a potential competitor, ERE has seemingly not been affected by it in terms of contributors, and the two boards have co-existed. Perhaps due to having similar interests and regularly being in the same place at the same time (The Rec in Bath on match days), the message board community has now spilled out into real life with contributors often meeting before and after games for socialising and rugby discussion.
In May 2008, ERE received a million hits for the first time.
