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Kilburn Cosmos RFC played its first games 10 years ago on Tiverton Green. Founded by John Tymon, an Irishman with a love for fast moving, running rugby, the club quickly attracted an international player base from around the area. His reason for calling us "Cosmos" has been the subject tortured historical debate over the years, but there is no doubting that John was motivated by a desire to bring rugby to an area of London which is among the poorest in the UK and suffers from a marked lack of sporting opportunities available to the local community. We were given a great deal of helpful and friendly support by other clubs in the area, and by Middlesex County who have nurtured us over the years, particularly Keith King who often appeared at our fixtures and Sue Goodenough for her work in administration.

In our first decade the club developed, particularly from season 2002/03 to the present, since when we have maintained 2 sides consistently in the Herts Middlesex league and the Middlesex Merit Table. In the 2004/05 season we added a women's team and in the 2006/07 season started work on re-launching the club's junior section. We are proud that we reached the final of the Floodlit Cup a few years back and have done well in sevens competitions over the years. We believe will challenge at a higher league level in the future.

Facilities and Community Involvement

Any Middlesex clubs who have played on our original home ground would hardly describe it as a pleasure. Our own players call it Dog Poo Hill, and the 10 minute walk between the pitch and the changing rooms at South Hampstead Cricket Club is hardly ideal, although we find good facilities there and we are very grateful to them for making them available to us. We have no training ground as such - over the years we have borrowed space at the old Willesden athletic track, used a primary school playground and are currently working with Brent Council to develop floodlighting in Gladstone Park.

We are committed to developing the club, particularly its youth section, committed to staying in the Kilburn area and to providing rugby union in Brent - one of the poorest boroughs in the UK - and will not take the easy option of moving the club away from its base in this area to find facilities in other parts of London. For the game to grow it needs to take root in areas where it has not previously been available to the community, especially in areas like this where access to any sport for any age group is severely limited.

In order to establish the Cosmos in Kilburn for the next decade we are attempting to maintain our current level of growth by recruiting and retaining players, using that growth to push for better facilities and to make the club an established part of the local community.

Social

We are a seriously social club, we tour as often as 4 times a season and make sure that everyone can travel by keeping it cheap. We have recently toured to Madrid, Warsaw and Berlin, taking more and more players every year, and in August we took over 40 people on a joint Ladies and Men's pre season tour to Cornwall. We do our best to provide training without any suitable facilities and we do our best to ensure that anyone who comes to us is made immediately welcome and can find a level of rugby that they are happy with.

Youth

We are a community rugby club committed to developing youth rugby because we believe that any club that is not actively developing the game among the next generation is only fulfilling half of its bargain with the union.

Sponsor

We are very grateful for the support that we have received from The Crown, who are backing us for a second season. Tommy Moran and Crown Moran staff have consistently made us more than welcome since we approached them for sponsorship in the 2005/06 Season.

Aims

Over the years the club has been served by a group of highly committed individuals, going back to John Tymon himself, who put so much into getting us started. Our aim is to provide rugby union to a higher standard, first and foremost, but also to ensure that the game is as accessible as it can be to the local community. By achieving this, we believe we can make a greater contribution to Middlesex Rugby and put more back into the game.

2006/2007