HISTORY

Totton Grammar School opened in 1955, and five years later produced the first batch of school leavers and ex-pupils. So, in 1960, Head of P.E. Ivor Roach organised an Old Boys versus School 1st XV game, intending this to be an annual event. Twelve months later, after the second match, which took place during the latter half of the 1961-1962 season, the lads decided to keep the team together, and so OLD TOTTONIANS RFC came into being. With only a few weeks of the season left, some fixtures were arranged against the Vets and/or Colts sides of Esso, Follands and Havant. There were only 13 regularly available players and the shortfall was often made up from lads who were still attending the Grammar School.

Following the inaugural Annual General Meeting, a committee was formed and an application was submitted for registration with the Hampshire RFU. The committee consisted of Ray Hill (Chairman), Bill Barnes (Honorary Secretary), Chris Watton (Treasurer), Chris Noble (Match & Fixtures Secretary), Tony Pointer (Captain), Tony Kemish (Vice captain) and Mick Hopper (Committee member). Our Club President was Douglas Stevens, the school's incumbent headmaster. We were essentially a closed Club, but our constitution allowed for "a maximum of four Associate Members who were not ex-pupils of Totton Grammar School".

Five seasons into our life we became an open Club, dropped the word "old" from our title and re-registered in 1965 with The Hampshire RFU as TOTTONIANS RFC. This gave us the potential to attract more members and allowed us to field a regular 2nd XV.

One year later we moved into our first “home”, a council-owned pavilion in Calmore, affectionately called “The Shed”, which we shared with the local cricket club. Up to then, we had our after-match nosh and booze at a variety of local public houses — The Old Farmhouse, The Red Lion, The Anchor, Mortimer‘s Tavern (as it was called then) and The Testwood Hotel. A couple of years later, Calmore Cricket Club moved into their new premises and we were granted sole occupancy of the pavilion.

Meanwhile, in 1965, based at Testwood Secondary School, a team was turning out under the name of Testwood Youth Club, which changed its name to TOTTON RFC the following season. They started fielding an occasional 2nd XV in 1967-68.

With such a small caption area and with Trojans always our competition for the more ambitious players, both local Clubs were soon struggling to honour their 2nd XV fixtures and resorted to fielding a combined 2nd XV. Inevitably, in 1969 -70 Totton RFC merged into the Tottonians RFC set-up, which combined both Clubs' strengths and negated a lot of their weaknesses, with Alan Henbest being elected as Club Captain. This enabled us to start turning out a regular Third XV each week. Following his untimely death in a car accident on 30th August 1970, Al was replaced as captain by Freddie Miller. In the 1975 -76 season a Colts side was introduced. Ten years later, as part of the Club's twenty-five year anniversary celebrations in 1986 - 87, Dave Chiverton organised a Totts v Old Players match. From this came the idea of forming a Veterans' Team, which initially played casual fixtures.

After years of searching for a suitable ground on which to build our own facilities, we finally moved into our current Clubhouse, in Water Lane, during the summer of 1996.

Bill Barnes

Page last modified at 07:32 on 05 February 2008