Hucclecote Rugby Club are closing in on the 50th anniversary of their first ever game.

Official records show that the club were formed in 1970 but they actually played their first match at the back end of the 1968/69 season.

So says Tony Wainwright who should know because he was the person who formed the club all those years ago.

Since then Wainwright, now 76, has been a player, coach, player/coach, senior rugby manager, chairman and president of the club and he’s still involved today because he works with the 2nd XV and is an honorary vice-president.

The club, whose flagship team play in Gloucester Premier, have been a huge part of his life for the past five decades.

And yet Wainwright, by his own admission, has always been more of a football man than a rugby man, particularly in his younger days.

“Football is still my number one sport,” he said. “Rugby has been my life but football is my passion.”

A Shropshire man, Wainwright played both football and rugby when he was growing up.

He was a goalscoring centre-forward – “In my early days I had movement,” he said – and was a junior at Shrewsbury Town although he was a big Wolves fan.

He played rugby at Ludlow Grammar School where he was an openside flanker and was good enough to play as a very late replacement for Shropshire in a game against Glamorgan in 1962.

“What a difference that was,” he said, “it was the pace of the game. But it helped that I was playing with a better class of player. Good players offload the ball before the contact.”

Wise words spoken by someone who clearly understands the game but, he insists, that certainly wasn’t the case when he moved to this part of the world in the late 60s to become head of PE at Hucclecote School.

“I was a complete novice at rugby coaching, I had no experience at all,” he said.

Novice he may have been but in his first year at the school, the 1st XV – they had only one team – enjoyed a very successful season. So much so that the pupils asked Wainwright if he’d form a club for the school’s former pupils and the rest, as they say, is history.

“We played a few friendlies to start with,” said Wainwright, “but in our first season we got to the final of the North Gloucester Combination Junior Cup final.”

That was in April 1970 against Tredworth at Kingsholm, a game Tredworth won 20-9.

Wainwright didn’t play in that game – he was playing for Old Patesians at this stage of his rugby life – but he was the club’s coach.

So how did he learn to become a rugby coach?

“I studied New Zealand forwards play in the 70s and Welsh backs play in the 70s,” he said. “I developed my coaching cribbing from the greatest.

“At Hucclecote we ran the ball and recycled it and I used to shout, ‘Make the ball available’. I was lucky enough to meet Carwyn James after Llanelli had beaten New Zealand in 1972. I spoke to him for an hour and he told me I was ahead of the times.”

And running with the ball at every opportunity and clearing out the rucks brought with it success, most notably some 20-odd years ago when the club came within a game of a showpiece final at Twickenham.

“It was in one of the national knockout competitions and we lost the semi-final to Malvern at Coventry,” said Wainwright.

And the competitive juices are clearly still flowing in Wainwright because mention of that game prompts him to say: “We were robbed.”

The result may not have gone their way that day but it was a still a great achievement for a club that these days run two senior teams.

They also have a thriving youth section from ages six and seven to 17 which Wainwright describes as “massive”.

“We also have a thriving ladies’ rugby section who gained promotion last season,” Wainwright added. “The ladies and the juniors play a huge part in their contribution to the club.”

The club have certainly come a very long way over the years. They originally played at the sports field at Hucclecote School, which closed in 1987, and now play at Charlie’s Way in Churchdown Lane.

“Yes, I am very proud of what has been achieved,” said Wainwright, who went on to teach at Severn Vale School and whose son Matthew also played for the club. “I never thought it would be like this.”

He has every reason to be proud.