FARNHAM Rugby Club’s facilities are the best in the area, but that has been the case for only three of the 40 years the club has been in existence.

Standing up from the Mud, a reference to the club’s Wrecclesham home of 33 years, using pitches notorious for glutinous mud, has been written and collated by club stalwart Mark ‘Benjy’ Weeks and traces the colourful history of Farnham RFC which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2015-16.

In a remarkably short space of time, he has produced a worthy club history. Packed with press cuttings and photos, it includes contributions from the pioneers – Hugh Dixon, prime mover and first chairman, and Peter Bewsey, the first captain – and many others, including Geoff Robins, the current chairman, who spearheaded the campaign for a new home at Monkton Lane.

All played important roles as the club evolved from a scratch side that played a few friendlies in 1975-76 to the club which today fields four senior sides at weekends (the 1st XV compete in London 3 South-West) and boasts a massive junior section.

Sir Clive Woodward, whose successful career as England manager co-incided with the rise of Jonny Wilkinson, a former Farnham RFC junior, pays tribute to the club in the foreword. He writes: “This club is all about ‘team’ both on and off the pitch. The finest facilities in the south-east, four senior teams and a waiting list to join your junior ranks is the result of keen focus and enormous effort.”

There was an Alton & Farnham Rugby Club back in the 1950s, with matches at Farnham’s end played at Farnham Park and the gas works ground. Alton went solo in 1972 and Farnham only got a club of its own when Hugh Dixon was deputed to attend a Farnham Sports Council AGM and asked the question, “Why do we not have a rugby club in Farnham?” He was promptly given a brief to launch one.

At lightning speed, a committee was formed, a team recruited and, by kind permission of the headmaster, Farnham RFC made its home debut at Waverley Abbey School. For goal posts, the fledgling team used pine trees cut down in Hugh Dixon’s garden. The Mitre, a popular pub in West Street, was the first ‘clubhouse’.

Standing up from the Mud recounts how the club moved from Waverley Abbey to Farnham Park, to Wrecclesham where the club had a self-built clubhouse based on a £150 army hut, and finally, on a momentous day in 2012, to Wilkinson Way in Monkton Lane.

Club members had borne those spindly pine posts to Waverley Abbey in 1975 and, delightfully, the club came full circle when posts were carried to Monkton Lane as part of the Carnival procession, with juniors bearing the crossbar.

Other highlights over 40 years: the time when Geoff Bond (current president) arranged through his RAF contacts for a Chinook to descend low enough at Wrecclesham to blow water away after a deluge; the match against a Surrey XV in September 1979 to mark the opening of the Wrecclesham ground; Farnham coming close to a major upset when they lost 15-12 to mighty Esher in the 1984 Surrey Cup; the huge roar that went up at Wrecclesham when Jonny Wilkinson kicked that drop goal; the official opening of Wilkinson Way by Lord Coe in December 2012.

And then there is the 12-year journey that began when Farnham earmarked the Monkton Lane site as a potential permanent home. The tortuous planning process has been well documented in the Herald.

It culminated in a public enquiry and Geoff Robins describes the moment when he finally saw light at the end of the tunnel. “The turning point in the enquiry was when Ben Rubio gave evidence at the hearing,” he said. “Ben, son of club treasurer Andrew Rubio, had played at Farnham since he was six years old and was then a young man of 19 embarking on his senior rugby career, playing with Loughborough University. He spoke simply and honestly about what rugby meant to him, the conditions he had grown up in at Wrecclesham and what can be achieved when enjoying the game in first-class facilities.

“That changed the whole argument from one about ‘how do we stop this development’ to ‘what can we do to get this done’.”

Farnham got their planning permission, but the finance still had to be raised. How that was finally achieved could make a book on its own. But it was, and the pitches and clubhouse stand as testament to the prodigious efforts of a club which did indeed ‘stand up from the mud’.

All profits from Standing up from the Mud (price £50) will go towards a 4G pitch to be laid on one of the current training/floodlit pitches. The book can be bought now from the club website at http://www.farnhamrugby.org/shop/?p=169406 – with £5.59 pp to UK and mainland Europe – or from Sunday (Dec 6) at the Monkton Lane clubhouse which is open Tuesday and Thursday evenings as well as weekends.