Blackheath Rugby Club

Hello and welcome to the official SNAP Sponsorship profile of Blackheath Rugby.

We're delighted to announce that we’ve now partnered with SNAP Sponsorship and we’re looking for sponsors who are excited about affiliating themselves with the oldest rugby club in the world!

We strive to craft a partnership with our sponsors that meets their specific objectives, whether that be community gifting, social responsibility (CSR), direct sales or brand building.

We’ll work with you to develop a partnership which meets both your objectives and adds value to our members — supporting our club’s ongoing work in the community to remove barriers and make sport enjoyable, accessible and sustainable for all.

Whatever your motivation, find out more below. Thank you for visiting our profile.

Why Sponsor Us?

Over 1000 members with supporters all over the world

Being a partner of Blackheath offers many benefits. We can offer you the opportunity to promote your business to our extensive membership, supporters and the wider community by advertising and representation on our website and through our social media channels  — which have a large following.

Our partners brands are prominently positioned on our website: www.blackheathrugby.co.uk with links through to their own website. We offer a range of packages to our partners, from pitch perimeter boards to match sponsorship — to full advertising on our kit and at our ground at Well Hall near Eltham. We also have excellent facilities which can be hired for receptions, parties and networking events at our Well Hall ground.

Blackheath has an array of sponsorship opportunities which can be tailored to meet your objectives. Through sponsorship, our club will promote your company in a wide variety of ways enriching the profile of your business in our community. 

We're top of national league 2E and set for promotion

Halfway through the season in Nat2E we're sitting comfortably at the top of the league and its looking very good for promotion to Nat 1 next season.

A strong, experienced squad has meant we've been able to run three men’s teams this season.

Founded in 1858 and the worlds oldest open rugby club, we are where club rugby started. This is why we're known as [the] ‘Club’  to our fans, members and supporters throughout the world.

Get involved in grassroots sport and remove economic barriers making sport affordable and accessible for all

Sponsorship of a grassroots sport delivers a much higher return on investment than traditional advertising. This is because sponsorship allows your business to become directly involved in activities that are highly valued by local consumers.

Consumers are known to form strong positive associations with sponsors who support the development of grassroots sport and contribute to the local community. With eight out of ten consumers preferring to believe in what a company does rather than what it says, it’s easy to see why many businesses are choosing to sponsor rugby clubs like ours as a way of maximising their marketing return.

By directly supporting us, you’re helping to remove economic barriers — making sport affordable and inclusive for all.

Contact us now to find out more and explore what Blackheath Rugby Club can offer you!

Our Club Today

Become part of our family — partner with the oldest open rugby club in the world

Founded in 1858, Blackheath FC is known in every corner of the globe as (the) CLUB.

We started and others followed and now you have the opportunity to be part of our heritage, and our future.

Blackheath is the oldest open rugby club in the world and we enjoy a very proud history and heritage. Founded in 1858, we have a brand that is known and recognised across the world of rugby for its contribution towards the development of the game. We are proud of both our longevity and the fact that our membership covers the whole of the community, with opportunities for boy and girls to join us from the age of 6 years old.

At the top of the club, we run Men’s teams and Women’s teams. Our First team plays in the National Leagues and we play our matches against teams from across the country. We have almost a thousand members and our average attendance for home matches is over 500.

Our Club History — Where Club Rugby Started

In the 2008/2009 season Blackheath Rugby celebrated 150 years since its foundation. It must not be imagined, however, that when the boys from Blackheath Proprietary School started playing rugby on the Heath in 1858, they were a club in the sense that one would understand it today. They did not have an official secretary or treasurer until 1862 and matches would be arranged on an ad hoc basis.

The players were very young in those days. In 1863, Francis Maule Campbell was only 19 years old when he was Treasurer of Blackheath FC and also the newly formed Football Association. Fred Stokes was just 16 when he played the first game for Blackheath in 1871, 19 when he played for England and 24 when he played the second.

Charles Burgess Fry was widely regarded as England's greatest 'All Rounder' playing cricket, soccer, rugby and was holder of the world long jump record for 25 years. He played for the Club and Barbarians.

The situation is described rather well by Arthur Ash who founded Richmond FC in 1861. In a letter to a meeting to form the Football Association in December 1863, he wrote, “They (Richmond) would have sent representatives to the Association meetings from the first, but for the fact that they had no organised club (as distinct from a team playing under the name of Richmond, be it understood)”. Then followed the organisation of Richmond FC as a properly constituted club. This seems to have followed the pattern set by Blackheath in 1860 because the Sinclair brothers Alex and John, along with Burnett and Gower etc. attempted to formalise their situation by calling themselves the Old Blackheathens, with William Burnett as their captain. In theory, this was to be a Proprietary School Old Boys team, however due to lack of numbers, they always had to rely on outsiders to make up a team that would consist of up to twenty players. After two years trying, the boys finally had to admit that they were an open club and so at the start of the 1862-63 season, they changed their name to Blackheath Football Club. The event was celebrated at the Jubilee Dinner held on 24th February 1912, and later at the 75th Anniversary Dinner in November 1937. In 1958-59 the Club celebrated the centenary of the foundation.

The lack of any written documentation to establish the date of the foundation of Blackheath Football Club leaves many historians in a quandary regarding the date. There are, however, documents that indicate that rugby was instituted at the Blackheath Proprietary School around 1856, and also that the boys who founded the Club were playing on the Heath in 1858.

The memoirs of former Prep School pupils published in 1933 by J.W. Kirby BA, contain references that rugby was played by the school on the heath from that time and the names given as founders of the Club were consistent. The claim is also supported by references in Marshall’s “Football the Rugby Game” published in 1892, the date being unquestioned at the time.

Blackheath is the oldest independent Rugby club, meaning that it was not attached to any institution such as a military establishment, hospital, school or college. There were a number of institutional sides that are older than Blackheath and it was they who provided the Club’s opposition. The Proprietary School and Blackheath FC had annual fixtures against each other for many years. It was on these occasions that the school supporters would shout “Up School” to the counter cries of “Up Club”. Blackheath FC are still known as “the Club” to this day.

The development of Blackheath FC is so much a part of the development of Rugby Football that it is virtually an early history of the sport itself. By walking out of the meeting to form the Football Association, Blackheath caused the schism in football that divided it into two codes - soccer and rugby.

They were founder members of the RFU, co organisers of the first ever international match and host to many more at the Rectory Field. Blackheath hold the record for the most international caps gained by its players until the Professional era started in 1995-96.

In 1888-89 the London Society of Referees was formed by A.J Budd and G.L Jeffery. Both were captains of Blackheath. At Easter the following season, Percy Carpmael, another Club captain, founded the Barbarians touring side. In 1906-7 three players, W.S.D Craven, ‘Birdie’ Partridge and Clive Liddell, founded the Army Rugby Football Union and for many years the Rectory Field, Blackheath’s home since 1883, was the Army’s home ground in London.

Cyril Nelson "Kit" Lowe is the most capped Blackheath player, representing England 25 consecutive times between 1913 and 1923. Shot down 9 enemy planes in WW1 and was shot down himself. The author, Captain W.E. Johns, supposedly based his fictional ace fighter pilot ‘Biggles’ on Cyril Lowe.

Our Present and Future

In recent history Blackheath were running over 20 teams with only two home pitches. To ease this situation a second ground was acquired nearby at the start of 2007-08.

The site at Well Hall, Eltham, was developed into a community facility. An ‘All weather pitch’ was opened in August 2009 by representatives of the RFU, Greenwich Council and other bodies who helped to raise the funding for its installation. In September 2016 it had become imperative for the development and future health of the Club to move 1st XV matches from its long-time home at Rectory Field to these premises at Well Hall. This caused much heartache but with the ongoing developments and improvements at Well Hall, the Club now has a home base worthy of National 1 rugby.

Rectory Field continues to be used by many other teams of the Club and remains fondly in all our memories.

A great many thanks are due to our Club officials, past and present.

Aspirations

With membership and crowd attendances rising, we have plans to continue to develop and grow our club and community is as important to us as ever. We offer free membership to men and women between the ages of 18 to 22 to help support this age group who were so badly affected during the pandemic. This means they can come and play, meet their peers etc. without any financial constraints.

We're also continuing our community projects, working with local primary schools to provide free coaching to children who may not have the opportunity to learn about rugby otherwise.

At our site in Hervey Road we've just installed a small wilderness area with bug hotels, butterfly hidey-holes, bird boxes etc., so that local schools can bring children to enjoy a little bit of nature in South London.

Naturally, we want to support our sponsors and build them in to our club on a strategic level — allowing all of our partners to benefit from our ever-improving facilities, expanding audience and our community involvement.