THERE is huge ambition and a real community spirit at Bournemouth Rugby Club.

The historic club is aiming for the summit of the rugby pyramid, the Premiership, after being taken over by businessmen Richard Carr, Matthew Barker and Drew Mellor.

The trio are aiming to make Bournemouth the next Exeter – a club that progressed from the fourth tier of the game to win both the Premiership and the European Champions Cup.

Speaking before the club’s home season opener against Chobham at Chapel Gate, Carr said the club has set about making the senior teams ‘really good’ and begun the process of progressing up the pyramid.

(Image: Newsquest)

“We've encouraged a lot of new players back and I think there is generally a feeling that we're going places, and I wouldn't be involved in this if it wasn't going to be going places,” he told the Daily Echo.

“I'm not interested in peddling water; I'm interested in moving forward.

“It might be a six-year programme, an eight-year programme. It might take ten years. But I don't see any reason why we cannot become a Bath or an Exeter, I really don't.

“We live in a conurbation of nearly half a million people, we’re the 11th largest unitary authority in the country.

“We're a big conurbation, there's a lot of rugby clubs around us, but I want Bournemouth Rugby Club to become the pinnacle of all of the Dorset rugby clubs that people look up to.

“I think that in time, with the right guidance and with the right financial input and commercialising the club where we can, I think we should be able to be an Exeter or a Bath, I don't see why we shouldn't be.”

(Image: Newsquest)But while there is a wave of positivity at the club now, just last season the club was staring down the barrel of financial troubles that meant they couldn’t even afford rugby balls, with the first team relegated to Regional Two South Central.

Carr used to play for the club and he first heard of their troubles as a parent last season, with his son playing in the U12s.

“It was in arrears with his payments to the university which is obviously where rugby is played,” Carr said.

“The club was in a terrible situation. Revenues were going down and down.

“It's not rocket science what we've done. We brought the old management back [Will and James Croker, director of rugby and commercial director], the old chairman [Phil Sinkinson] has come back.

“We've applied some commercial logic to the thinking.

“We've raised probably the best part of £160-170,000 in sponsorship in the first three months.”

(Image: Newsquest)

On the decision to take the club over, he said: “It would have been a travesty for 300 to 500 people on a Sunday who come here to train from the age of four up to the age of 16 or 18 to have lost that facility.

“I think that it was the right thing to do what we've done and hopefully we can propel the club forward from where we are today into being a proper force in rugby.”

He pointed to the example of AFC Bournemouth when Eddie Mitchell took the helm in 2009, taking them from League Two to the Premier League.

“Why can't we do that with Bournemouth rugby?” Carr said.

“It's exactly the same thing. But on the way, I'm not doing this for financial gain.

“I'm doing this because I think it's a really good project for the community and it's a really good project for me to have something to do at weekends and to be proud of.

“I think that it'd be great for the conurbation to have a rugby club that was level with its football club.”

(Image: Photo: Simon Carlton)

The club has stabilised financially and, while it is looking for more investment, it is looking to the future.

It is a couple of weeks away from exchanging contracts on its own piece of land so it will no longer have to rent space at Chapel Gate from the university.

“We will be able to have three pitches there, a substantial clubhouse with a balcony with all the facilities that we want,” Carr explained.

“It's going to cost a lot of money. So, it'll have to be commercialised, so it gets daytime revenue as well.

“There’ll probably be a gymnasium in there, a creche, it will be a place that people can go to in the day and the profits from that will flow back into the club.

“But we're going to have to put hands in our pockets for that.

(Image: Newsquest)

“It's going to be a substantial sum of money, it's going to cost £2.5million to build the clubhouse and do the pitches.

“But I'm prepared to do that because I think it's a great cause.”

Carr said despite the herculean task ahead of them, he is relishing the challenge – but that the key to long-term success also comes through growing the club’s youth and mini sections, as well as the women’s and wheelchair sections.

The new owners have given everyone in the youth section of the club free kit, without raising the subs for families, and he wants to double the number of children participating each weekend.

“We live in a conurbation of 450,000 people. Why can't we have a youth section of 600, 700 people?” he said.

“I think that would be great because in society today you hear all the time people going, oh, there's no youth clubs anymore, there's nothing for children to do.

“Well, there is something for children to do. They can come and play rugby.”

(Image: Newsquest)

Returning chairman Sinkinson said the new owners bringing financial stability has turned the club’s mentality around.

“I've been in and been chairman of three or four different rugby clubs and it all comes from the top,” the retired diplomat said.

“If you've got owners, an executive committee, coaches who are positive and lay down their expectations, the club benefits enormously from that and that's what's happened in this club.

“Part of the problem with that, of course, is that expectations are very high, so you've got to balance that.”

Sinkinson was the chairman when Bournemouth reached the national leagues in 2018, winning every game bar one in their promotion season.

“That was the culmination of three years hard work where we finished fifth in the first year, third in the second year and run away with it in the third year,” he said.

“That's brilliant and that's what we can do here, maybe even quicker.

“But you've got to do it properly and the point I would make about that is if you've got a solid team together and they trust each other and they understand where they're going, it will work.”