Chris Rawlings knows a player when he sees one and he reckons Drybrook’s Joe Tingle is very good indeed.

Rawlings, who recently took over as Drybrook’s chairman from Paul Mason, is well qualified to voice his opinion after a stellar career that saw him play more than 700 games for the club.

He still plays the odd game now even in his mid-40s and had the pleasure of playing alongside a very young Tingle towards the tail-end of his 1st XV days.

That was four or five years ago when Tingle, a back row, was still very much in his teens. Now 22, he is very much a mainstay of the club’s flagship team as they look to march onwards and upwards in South West One West.

“He’s a phenomenal player,” Rawlings said of Tingle. “He gets around the field like there’s no tomorrow. The amount of hits and tackles he puts in is fantastic.

“He’ll make a tackle but he’s always there at the next breakdown. I don’t know how he does it.

“He was good last year but this season he has taken it to another level.”

Young Tingle is a Drybrook man through and through. His dad Chris, a hooker, has played even more games for the club than Rawlings – more than 860 – and young Joe has been pulling on the green shirt that is Drybrook since the under-7s, going through all the age groups before breaking into the 1st XV.

He has known nothing but success as Drybrook have continued to progress through the divisions, and promotion is again very much the target this season.

Tingle was also in the side that played at Twickenham in the Intermediate Cup final in 2013 although that was to end in defeat to Selby.

Rawlings has more reason than most to be enjoying the rise and rise of young Joe because, as well as playing alongside him, he also played in the same team as his dad, an ex-captain of the club, for many years.

“Joe’s got his dad’s personality,” said Rawlings, a fly-half or centre. “If anyone was going to have a sing-song on the bus it was Chris and Joe is just the same. Put them on the bus together and it’s a competition to see who can sing the loudest!”

“Joe’s a real jack the lad in the nicest possible way. He’ll sing, he’ll dance and he’s always up for a laugh.

“He’s a real clubman and apart from Swansea University he’s never played for any other team. Even when he was at Swansea he used to come back and play for us on Saturdays.”

Rawlings himself is a past captain of the club, having done the job for five seasons back in the day. He captained Tingle senior and has coached Joe and, like the Tingles, lives and breathes the club.

He started off at the club with the under-6s and like Tingle senior goes to all of Drybrook’s games, home and away.

“I stopped playing regularly when I was 40 or 41,” said Rawlings. “Last season I had a few games for the 3rds and I still train with the 1st team. Mind you, the knocks hurt a bit more now!”

The bumps and bruises are part and parcel of the great game that is rugby, of course, and Drybrook have certainly shown that they can mix it with the roughest and the toughest in recent times.

“Yes, we do punch above our weight,” admitted Rawlings, “but we do want to take the club to the next level. We want promotion and if we can do it this season that would be great.

“It’s pointless going out on the pitch if you don’t want to win.

“We’ve been in this division for a couple of seasons now and we’ve cemented our place in the league.

“We know it would be a massive step up if we did get promoted, but we’ve got to try to get there and we’d love to have a crack at it.

“We’ve seen other sides get out of this league and hold their own. We know we’d have to recruit, but hopefully if we did go up we’d be able to attract more players because we’d be playing at a higher level.”

The next level up is South West Premier which is home to some seriously good clubs. Near neighbours Lydney play in the division along with the likes of Dings Crusaders, Newton Abbot and Exmouth.

While that is for the future, Rawlings is just as keen to focus on taking the club forward off the pitch as well as on it.

“We’ve got some great facilities but we want to take them to the next level,” he said. “And we want more juniors coming through into the senior teams. A lot seem to stop playing at 16, 17, 18 and that’s something we’d like to change.”

With people like Rawlings driving the club forward, it’s not difficult to imagine that dream becoming a reality.

And if today’s teens need a role model they need only look at Joe Tingle. And it’s not just Tingle who is a young gun firing Drybrook forward. Skipper Ben Large is still in his early 20s, and others such as Mitch Hale and Olly Moore are proving if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.

The future certainly looks bright for Drybrook Rugby Club.