RICHARD Thorpe is excited at the thought of seeing rugby being played again at Kingsey Road next week.

From tomorrow, our sport can return under stage D1 of the RFU’s Return To Community Rugby Roadmap.

This allows for contact training (excluding scrum and maul), Ready4Rugby, O2 Touch and Tag matches against other clubs.

It has been more than three months since rugby was last played at Chinnor RFC Thame and Director of Rugby, Richard Thorpe is looking forward to its return.

He said: “With everything that’s going on with the vaccination programme and the government roadmap, this feels like it could finally be a return to business as usual at Kingsey Road.

“With that just comes pure excitement at the prospect of rugby players finally being able to play rugby again – it’s great.

“We now have an opportunity to bring back our Senior Squad players who have had bit-part training throughout this season.

“We have the potential for some friendlies in May which we will confirm later down the line, but now it’s about starting to prepare for what we expect to be a full season next year.”

He added: “We are a community rugby club. We’ve got upwards of 1,300 members at this Club and I’m sure the majority of them want to be playing or seeing rugby played at Chinnor.

“I’m delighted for our Minis & Juniors, our Kites, our Wildboys and Outlaws, and everyone who plays O2 Touch and Walking Rugby that they will have a rugby ball back in their hands and can start playing our game again.”

Our schedule for the first week is as follows:

• Tuesday – Senior Squad training
• Wednesday – Junior (U13+) training
• Thursday – Senior Squad & Kites training
• Friday – O2 Touch & Walking Rugby
• Sunday – Minis & Juniors training

The Wildboys and Outlaws will return to training on Tuesday, April 6.

For more details around the return of age grade rugby please click HERE and for senior and social (O2 Touch and Walking Rugby) click HERE.