In an interview with Islington Now, Finsbury Park club chairman, Nicholas Tewson said: “The first team has been promoted each season that they’ve been in existence. We certainly hoped that we would be pushing for promotion this year.”
“But, being realistic, we knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. To be where we are, in the top half of the table, is a good result, even if it’s not exactly where we wanted to be.”
This weekend Finsbury Park took a step further away from their promotion goals, as they lost to basement dwellers Royston, who currently sit 31 points below fifth-placed Finsbury Park in the RFU’s London north West Division 3.
Players remain hopeful of a successful end to the season
“We weren’t expecting any easy games in this division, because obviously there’s a reason these teams are at this level. But we’ve been mid table for most of the season and Royston has been further down, so we did go into it confident of getting a win,” Tewson said.
But recent troubles have not dampened the club’s spirit. Tewson said the players remain hopeful of a successful end to the season. “The guys will definitely be pushing to finish with a couple of wins. I don’t think we can finish much higher than we are now, but if we manage to finish in the top five places of the division, I think the guys would be reasonably satisfied with that.”
Despite the disappointing season by their own standards, the club is still hoping for promotion next season. “Absolutely [we’ll be aspiring for promotion next season] you’ve got to take into account the different factors including player turnover and those sorts of things, but the coaches and the players certainly believe they are good enough to be promoted.”
Rapid expansion in 6 years
Despite this season’s disappointment, Finsbury Park club have progressed at an impressive rate since they were founded. “We’ve seen quite rapid expansion,” Tewson added. “The club only really started playing competitive rugby in the 2013-14 season and we’ve expanded so we now have two adult men’s sides and we’ve got a player pool of roughly a hundred guys.
“At the moment for us, it’s really about establishing ourselves within North London rugby. A key for us as well is the social side, as well as the playing side, most of our guys are mid to late twenties or early thirties, so it’s about building a good culture.”
Finsbury Park’s ambitions are not limited to on-pitch affairs. “We would love to have our own clubhouse,” Tewson said. “At the moment we just have changing room facilities, but we spend a lot of our time at the local pubs. So, having a clubhouse that we could build the heart of our club around is a big ambition of ours. We’d also love to expand so that we have women’s rugby and youth rugby as well.”
