SIMON SMITH: Superb end to a fantastic year

Simon Smith's final column of the 2017/18 season

If you’d have said we’d win the Yorkshire Shield and also get promoted from Yorkshire One at the start of the season when I took over, I really wouldn’t have believed you.

It really has been a phenomenal effort from everyone involved to achieve what we have as a club this season.

There are so many people to thank, and I have to start with the players.

Their commitment to the cause, to want to achieve and play for each other has been great for me as a coach and has really been a cornerstone of our success.

While the players are the ones who go out there and produce the performances and put in the hard graft, there are so many who make it all possible off the field.

I have to say thank-you to the supporters, who have rallied behind the type of rugby we’ve tried to play this season, and even in defeat have been supportive of us.

There must’ve been between around 400-500 Scarborough fans in Hull for the final and they really made it like a home game at Silver Royd for us and that made a huge difference in our favour.

The season started early with Darren Fearn and David White getting some coaching sessions done early while I was abroad and that made a huge difference to us this year.

The captains across all three teams have been superb. Matty Jones in particular, but also Andy Rossol and George Wardell.

Thank you to David ‘Spook’ Smith and Breesha Curphey, our manager and physio respectively, for their efforts this season as well, they play a massive role in the day-to-day running of the team.

That can also be said of director of rugby Mike Holder and his assistant Phil Stewart, and also our chief executive Graeme Young, who gave me the opportunity to come here and coach and that is a chance I am grateful to have been given.

Sunday was a chance for us to play the final that we were denied when our play-off game against Durham City was, for whatever reason, postponed.

I have to finish this column by offering the condolences of myself and everyone at Scarborough RUFC for Durham City’s tragic loss of their players Thomas Howard and Tom Baty, who passed away while touring in Sri Lanka earlier this week.

My thoughts and condolences go out to the club and their families at this sad time.