December 2007

The most important development to report since our last newsletter is the excellent progress we at Rhino have made with our proposed campaign to promote and maintain safe and effective fully contested scrummaging within the rugby union game. In particular we are delighted to have received the endorsement of the community departments of both the RFU and the WRU for the SCRUMSMART roadshow which we hope to launch in the New Year. We are planning and negotiating to roll out this project further internationally going ahead, both in Europe and elsewhere.

In addition, I am delighted that I am being joined as a patron of this campaign not only by Martin Bayfield, but also one of the outstanding props in world rugby at this moment, Andrew Sheridan. Under the direction of England's 2003 Rugby World Cup winning scrum coach and Rhino consultant Phil Keith-Roach, this promises to be an interesting and important programme of events and it will be backed up by fundamental research into the forces involved in scrummaging by academic and industrial partners.

Rhino's market leading position at the top end of the scrummaging machine market in the UK has been augmented by recent purchases of our Dictator machine by Sale Sharks and Cambridge University - this in the latter case proving a decisive factor in their dominant scrummaging in the recent Varsity Match as reported here.

That apart we encourage you to check out our Christmas offers in this newsletter and as usual we are pleased to report our charitable activities - donating equipment to flood victim club Adwick le Street in Yorkshire and kit used by England in the recent World Cup, amongst other things, to the excellent SOS IRB Kit Aid charity which recycles equipment to emerging rugby nations.

Finally, our long standing scrum technician Mick Orton has recently left us to take up a position as a Community Rugby Coach with the RFU, and we wish him well. He will be replaced in the New Year by Richard Kingman who is looking forward to getting to know our customers and friends.

Martin Johnson,
Director.