Sedgley Park R.U.F.C.
Sedgley Park Rugby Union Football Club, the 1st XV team of which play under the name of Sedgley Tigers, is a rugby union club based in Whitefield, in the Metropolitan Borough of Bury, Greater Manchester. Last season they finished 15th in National Division One, the third tier of the English rugby union league hierarchy and were relegated to National League 2 North for season 2013–14. The Tigers nickname is due to their striped kit.
History
Sedgley Park is a district of Prestwich approximately two miles north of Manchester city centre. In 1932 at a public meeting in a temperance bar, the club began. The very first ground was a farmer's field in Whitefield, and the club has never been based in Sedgley Park. Despite primitive conditions - cowshed for changing, farmyard pump for washing - the new club thrived.
A clubhouse had already been built and three regular teams were being fielded before World War II broke out in 1939. They survived the war years, and also a difficult period afterward when they lost their rented ground. For two years all games were played away, with barely enough playing members for two teams, until in 1955 they moved to their present site, Park Lane in Whitefield, with an immediate and spectacular improvement in playing standards. During the next twenty years Sedgley Park became a successful and respected junior club but, in the years before league rugby, advancement was practically impossible, especially for a club notorious for its muddy pitches; they were often nicknamed 'Sludgley Park' by other teams! The decision to build a large, two-story clubhouse was arguably the most significant one in their history.