Old Elthamians

On 6 August 2021, Old Elthamians announced the club would not be fulfilling their fixtures in National League One. A team that was founded 110 years ago would have to start the season without a first team. This is the story of how it happened, what happened next and the rebuilding of a proud rugby club…

Ampthill v Old Elthamians, March, 2019, National League One. As close to a winner-takes-all game as there’s likely to be: the victor would take a lead in the division and effectively put their destiny in their own hands. But for the loser...

For both sides it meant making history, both had climbed the divisions, both had earned the right to be in their current position, challenging for a place among the professionals of the Championship. For Old Elthamians they would also become the first Old Boys team to reach the second tier of English rugby. 

Only seven years previously, in 2010, the visitors had been in London Division Two East and, according to their director of rugby, Gavin Lach, the team were being watched by ‘two men and a dog’. By, 2017, they had record crowds.

But that day, it all fell apart. Ampthill produced the performance of their lives, to inflict a 36-6 defeat that left the Kent side trailing by five league points – a margin they were never able to make up in the limited fixtures that remained. 

More significantly, that game would take on a greater importance, as it marked the beginning of the end for Old Elthamians as a senior rugby-playing team.

Turmoil and tragedy would soon follow. 

No sooner had the dust settled on their failed promotion challenge, than the team’s donor, Kobus Paulsen, ran into financial trouble. Having bankrolled Old Elthamians since around 2015, he had provided the funds to support Lach’s vision for the team on the pitch.

Then, in December 2019, to the shock of everyone associated with club, it was announced that Paulsen had died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 54.

The first fifteen soldiered on, but without their primary source of funding, and with the advent of covid scuppering any chance of generating external funds, they pulled out of the National League. The senior players were put on leave.

Almost two years since Paulsen’s passing, Rugby Journal visits Old Elthamians, and it’s a glorious early autumn morning in south-east London, the pitches at Eltham College are bathed in sunshine. 

Hundreds of kids are learning how to play rugby under the watchful eyes of coaches who also once played for this club and for whom Old Elthamians is akin to having an extended family.

Later that day, the new Old Elthamians Youth clubhouse will officially open. What’s more, the president of the RFU, Jeff Blackett, will be on hand to cut the ceremonial tape and signal a new era for the club.

He is visiting as part of a 150-mile walking tour across the country, stopping off at rugby clubs along the way to meet, greet and raise money for the Injured Players’ Fund and celebrate 150 years of the RFU. 

After everything that has happened since Ampthill away, what could possibly go wrong? “Our chairman (Paul Abbott) has just tested positive for covid and the electricity has gone,” says under-7s coach Deri Ryan. 

It turns into a race against time to get the power back on and serve up warm nachos and hot chilli for the junior and mini teams. 

Inside, the clubhouse is as one would expect: exposed brick walls lined with memorabilia and mementoes of past glories and celebrated former players. 

Old Elthamians have rugby pedigree. Star alumni include England and Lions loosehead prop Andrew Sheridan, Saracens and Wales centre Nick Tompkins and the Pearce-Paul brothers – Kai is an academy player at Saracens, while Kaden switched codes and now plays for Wigan Warriors. 

Deri is a Dubliner. As he gives us a guided tour he tells a tale about having front row seats for the European Rugby Champions Cup final between Leinster and Saracens in 2019, and how Tompkins ran over to have chat with him, much to the bemusement of all the Irishmen that gathered around them. 

When you’ve been volunteering and coaching at a club for 27 years, seeing one of your own play on the biggest stage is a moment you want to keep reliving.

Deri then points to a canvas print mounted on the wall that he says is ‘a bit Marmite’. It’s a blown-up, pixelated image taken from a junior rugby game. At the obvious risk of attaching a deep and more profound meaning to that artwork, in its own way, it reflects the recent history of this club. Do you stick to what you know and, to some degree, what is expected of you, or do you take a risk and try something a bit more daring and ambitious?

Old Elthamians were founded 110 years ago by six former students of Eltham College who wanted to start their own team.

They became the very model of an Old Boys club, that would have the odd good season, the odd not-so-good season and would win the occasional county cup tournament. Post-World War Two, they acquired something of a reputation for being a ‘robust’ outfit. It was always as much about the camaraderie, the tours, the shared memories.

Or, as Jeff Blackett puts it: “You go to places where there are three people on the committee and they’re talking about a try they scored in 1982. And that, in many ways, is what rugby is about.”

In 1974, Old Elthamians launched their minis and juniors section. 

One of the brighter young talents to progress from the minis into the juniors over the past decade was Brendon Paulsen, a student at Eltham College, who began at the club with the under-7s.

His father, Kobus, would turn up to every match, see his son play, and muck in just the same as every other proud rugby parent. And it stayed that way until around 2015. “Brendon played from under-7s through to under-18s,” recalls Mathew Watkins, who grew up playing for Old Elthamians, went on to represent London Welsh, and now coaches the girls’ team at College Meadow. “He was a really good player in a really good team. 

“So, Kobus didn’t just arrive from nowhere. He genuinely loved being part of this club. Then he came forward and said he wanted to get more involved.” 

Kobus had two main business interests, including Cyber 1 which he launched in 2016 to capitalise on the burgeoning business of cyber security. Meanwhile, Secure Trading – a company that managed online payments – had been going since 2000.

On the pitch, under Gavin Lach’s leadership, the seniors decided to make a concerted effort to move up the leagues by bringing in a few new faces and bringing back some old faces who started off at the club, went on to play at a higherlevel and came back to bring a bit of nous to the seniors section. 

They included Max Wilkins who had started his rugby life at Old Elthamians, but went to join Saracens and had a career blighted by injuries, before returning to his ‘alma mater’ aged 21, in 2017.

At the start, it was all done quite modestly and largely through word of mouth. But the coach and players wanted to bring in some fresh ideas and ambition.

Following a string of shrewd recruitments and a series of promotions, the team soon climbed up the leagues and began the 2013-14 season in National League Two South. By now, though, Old Elthamians had outgrown the ‘spiritual home’ at Foxbury in Chislehurst and the first fifteen began playing their games at College Meadow, within the grounds of Eltham College.

There would have been a ceiling on that ambition and a limit to how far the club could go without the sort of financial backing that could bring them a genuine shot at promotion to National League One, but with Kobus Paulsen involved, Old Elthamians continued onwards and upwards . 

In 2015, the club signed Samoan fly-half Mike Stanley. Dom Lespierre arrived from Coventry and racked up a club record of 36 tries in 31 games as Old Elthamians won promotion to National League One in 2017. 

More new faces followed to ensure that Lach had players more than capable of competing at that level.

Around the same time, Secure Trading signed a four-year deal said to be worth around £1 million to sponsor the England Sevens. The deal would include the Sevens using College Meadow sports ground as their training base.

The club were on a roll. A record crowd of 1,653 people turned out to see Old Elthamians host a local derby match against Blackheath in 2017.

Meanwhile, Paulsen was mapping out his vision to turn College Meadow into a facility capable of hosting RFU Championship rugby. There was work to be done and planning permission had been submitted to install stands and a 3G pitch.

No other Old Boys club had reached such as rarified atmosphere since Askeans some 30 years earlier, who also hail from Eltham. They have more in common than geography. “In the late 80s the club had a bit of money, they were ambitious and signed Jeff Probyn,” recalls Watkins. “When England played Australia in the 1991 World Cup final both Probyn and Paul Randall were listed as Askeans.”

An obvious point of difference between the clubs was how things operated behind the scenes. The Askeans old guard, who apparently didn’t like the direction the club was being taken, ended up selling their ground. 

That coupled with the advent of professionalism, meant the club simply couldn’t compete financially and saw Askeans rapidly plummet down the leagues. “Anyone who lives around here and knows rugby knows about Askeans,” adds Watkins. “So, nobody was thinking, ‘this is a one-way journey’.” 

At Old Elthamians, Paulsen wanted to focus his finances purely on the senior side. So, in 2015, it was decided that the juniors and minis would become their own separate entity, a decision that may have felt rather clinical at the time but ultimately protected Old Elthamians from what was to follow.

In the early months of 2020, the financial picture began to look less than rosy. In April that year, Old Elthamians, along with Chinnor, unsuccessfully lobbied to get the National League One wage cap cut from £250,000 to £150,000. 

An open letter sent by Cyber1 to shareholders in May 2020, spelt out how some of Paulsen’s business interests unravelled as the company embarked on a series of mergers and acquisitions. 

Trying to make inroads into the US market proved to be its undoing, anchoring the business with debts, and prohibitively high administration costs, while simultaneously failing to attract enough external investment. As the old maxim goes, ‘Cash is king’.

The consensus of opinion is that with the obvious benefit of hindsight, relying on one sponsor, or donor, left the club exposed. But, of course, while the club had been climbing the leagues, the quality of rugby was improving with each season, the team were getting more exposure and pulling in record crowds, so nobody was really thinking about the negatives or the ‘what ifs’. 

Intially, the first fifteen continued to hold their own in the league, but what little chance the club would have had of attracting new sponsors disappeared with the outbreak of covid. The pandemic also meant the 2020-21 National League One season was cancelled, and when it came to restarting in 2021-22, Old Elthamians stepped aside.

Thankfully, the decision to split the juniors and minis from the seniors meant the kids could continue playing and the parents could continue coaching. But, as Paul Abbott says, there is an ongoing job of convincing everyone that Old Elthamians is very much a going concern. And what happens to the seniors, at the time of writing, remains unclear.

When they are in a position to return to senior rugby, it won’t be in National League One, which has restarted this season without them. The RFU’s rules state it will be in the bottom league of their constituent body, which is Kent 2.

But, the seniors will return. In fact, they have to return. The rules also state that, without the first fifteen, the club is at risk of eventually losing their right to vote at the RFU AGM. That could also mean missing out on an annual allocation of tickets for England’s autumn internationals. 

On the day that the new clubhouse was opened a raffle was held to see who would get those tickets. “When you take kids along to watch England play at Twickenham, that can really inspire them,” says Paul. “You know, it doesn’t get much better than that.”

But perhaps the heart of the Old Elthamians story is about what does it really mean to be an amateur rugby club? What does success look like? Is it about climbing the leagues and winning games and trophies, or is it about creating a structure where kids can progress into colts and aspire to play for a semi-professional team or even become the next Nick Tompkins? 

And what about the club itself. Is it about having a good social scene or making a positive impact in the community and spreading the gospel of the game?

Or can you be all things to everyone? “Some clubs have an adult division that plays, enjoys the game, enjoys the camaraderie of it,” says Paul. “And they have a strong social side. And some clubs can do that and get it right.

“And what they do really well is incorporate their youth section. What happens is that you start to learn that the minis and the juniors provide the groundswell, and provide the finances to help fund the seniors to play their matches. 

“And you kind of need to understand that’s how it’s always gonna happen.

“It has to funnel upwards, to give you and the kids something to aspire to. And if you can get that right, then you’re on a great path. 

“The challenge we had was having the aspiration of getting to a really high level, which we did. You know, we literally got into the professional leagues! 

“At that stage, the magic can start to happen. But to do that and bring the whole club with you is a massive challenge. 

“And it’s probably fair to say we didn’t get that right. 

“The challenge now is how can we rethink it so that there is a pathway going all the way through from juniors through the seniors through to something more elite? By separating youth from seniors, we’ve done a really good job in protecting the youth division. But if we hadn’t decoupled, there would still have been that bond between the two. But then again, we could have fallen off a cliff!

“Do you risk not being able to progress through your regional, or your county level leagues, but actually still have a club as a whole? Or do you risk alienating one group to really succeed?”

And, as Paul stresses, at a grassroots level, you’re trying to juggle all these views while trying to keep a club ticking over and you’re relying on volunteers to ‘make the magic happen.’  “You either simply have a passion for the game or develop a passion for the game through bringing the kids along and you want to get involved with the club. 

“There’s a limited amount of time that you can put into it to make it work and yet you’re trying to have something that runs smoothly every week, throughout the season. 

“And we’ve got to be absolutely clear that while we have a great relationship with Eltham College, who allow us to play on these great pitches, we are not affiliated with the school as a club. 

“While we have a great relationship with Eltham College, who allow us to play on these fantastic pitches, we are based here as we were formed by Old Boys of the school. But we are very much in the community and we attract players from the surrounding areas, not just this school.”

Like many London commuter belt communities, Eltham has experienced a degree of gentrification. But on the fifteen-minute walk to Eltham College from Mottingham Station, one sees a lot of maisonettes, social housing and ex-council houses. Inevitably, most kids here want to be footballers. But rugby offers another chance for kids from any background to be part of a team and form bonds that extend beyond school. 

“My family is multicultural,” says Paul. “For me, the England Rugby team proudly represents the multicultural make-up of this country and I see that inspiration in my kids. But being based where we are in south-east London, we probably have work to do in reflecting that representation both in our boys’ and girls’ teams.

“This should be a fun sport for everyone to play and you don’t have to go to a private school to enjoy it.” 

“But, you know, having said all of that,” continues Paul, “the youth division, as you will have seen when we opened the new clubhouse, is very much alive and kicking and in a very healthy state. There is money in the bank and we’ll continue to preach our very positive approach to playing and coaching rugby. And we’ll find our way back with the seniors.”

There is a famous quote that often gets misattributed to Mussolini and was first uttered by Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in South India. “In this world, I would rather live two days like a tiger, than two hundred years like a sheep.” But, in this world, life isn’t always a series of binary choices. Tipu Sultan may have been ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, but he never had to run an Old Boys rugby club. 

Story by Ryan Herman

Pictures by Tim Anger

This extract was taken from issue 16 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.