Manchester bid for the Bingham Cup, and won the right to host it.

The bid for the 2012 Bingham Cup

Manchester Village Spartans launched their bid to the world on 1 August 2010. Support had been assembled before the launch: on 27 July, Andrew Stokes, Chief Executive of Marketing Manchester, wrote to express full support on behalf of the agency for the city hosting the tournament. The bid was also actively supported by Ben Cohen, the straight professional English rugby player and former England international.

The decision came on 29 September 2010, when IGRAB announced that Manchester had secured the sixth Bingham Cup against a rival bid from Sydney. The Spartans had beaten the Sydney Convicts by six votes.

The First XV

Matt Whiteley was First XV captain. Dean Bee became vice captain from this season, a role he would hold for two years. Tez Law was the club’s highest try scorer with 31 tries.

Off the field

Neil Mason was club President and Alex Smith was Chair.

The Union Cup in Amsterdam

The fourth Union Cup was played at Amstelveense Rugby Club 1890 near Amsterdam in June 2011, hosted by the Amsterdam Lowlanders, and the Spartans travelled to it. Seventeen clubs entered, and the fifteens competition was six teams in two groups, the group games on the Friday and the knockout on the Saturday.

The club’s own record of the season held nothing of the rugby, only the photographs. Two fixtures have since been recovered from the Emerald Warriors’ contemporary report of the tournament. The Spartans beat Dublin 6-0 in the semi-final, two penalties and no tries, and then lost the final to the Kings Cross Steelers. No score for the final has been found. It was the club’s third Union Cup final, after Montpellier in 2005 and London in 2009.

The year’s awards

Russell Jaszewski was Player of the Year. Matt Whiteley, the captain, took the Players Player award. James Deponeo was Best New Comer and Dan Wass Most Improved, and Tez Law’s 31 tries took the Highest Try Scorer award. Steve Joyce was Supporter of the Year and Steve Farmiloe won the Chair’s Award; Farmiloe also shared the Queens Boots with Ben Short.

What the record holds

Little of the season’s rugby has come down to us: no league table and no fixture list for 2010-11 survives in the club’s archive, and the playing year is known only through the names on the roll of honour and the two Union Cup matches recovered from the opposition’s record. What does survive is the decision of 29 September, which set the club’s course towards the summer of 2012.