The People Who Make The Club
No 3: Pamela Kilmister, Media & Communications Manager
Years with Blackheath: Over 20
You may not recognise the name, but you will know the voice. If you followed the Club last season, you will have heard Pamela on the tannoy saying the words “Try for Blackheath, Number 2…” every ten minutes or so. You probably recognise the smile, too. Even on a grim, wet winter’s afternoon when the sun has gone to bed soon after kick-off and the wrong side of the scoreboard is rising rapidly, Pamela seems to look on the bright side.
“I love doing my job, I love working here and life is good,” she said. “And if it’s not, change it. There’s maybe one day a year when I wake up and don’t want to talk to anybody but what have I really got to complain about?” Her optimism and energy shine through in the club’s social media, which is one of her duties. Win or lose, Blackheath always comes across in her posts as a place where people like to be.
Pamela has rugby in her veins. She grew up near Bath and her father, grandfather and great-grandfather all played for Avonvale RFC. Her mum volunteered for the club and Pamela and her sister spent their weekends there. It taught her the importance of rugby for building a community, an extended family that she has found at Blackheath.
By chance, when she moved to southeast London early in her career as a business analyst for UBS it was to a house next door to Rectory Field. “I started going along to Blackheath and Dad was very excited because he knew all the history,” she said.
Pam with her Dad
After a few years of being there as a fan, it was a chance encounter in a pub with two Club stalwarts that got her more involved. One of her other passions is singing and after a concert at Blackheath Halls in 2012 she went for a drink in the Railway Tavern where she met Rick Whiteman and Chris Morgan, who was then on the Tannoy at Rectory Field, and they encouraged her to get involved with the Supporters’ Club. Mark Fiander, the then chair, was about to take his motorbike across South America and so, after her second meeting, he asked her to become chair, saying “You look like you get stuff done!”.
Pam ‘getting stuff done’ with the rest of the Volunteer Army
Gradually, she took on the social media roles – posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter during her commute – before taking over the website and, around Covid, the microphone on match day. “I work in finance and everything there was very spreadsheety,” she said. “This was my creative outlet and it was a nice balance.”
She was made redundant by HSBC last year, and this summer she was offered a part-time paid job by the club, in addition to her volunteering role, to do what she had always found a pleasure. She enjoys encouraging the players to express themselves online, beaming when she sees the latest bonkers Instagram video from Archie Holland. “That helps supporters to know who they are,” she said.
Pam on kit release media duties
For her, the key word is community, which she enjoys building and nurturing online as well as in person. “These are my people, this is my gang,” she said. “Blackheath feels like home. And I really believe in the importance of giving back to the community.”
The Blackheath community spreads a lot further than Well Hall. Pamela has found the Club is known around the world, even in Japan when she went to the 2019 World Cup. She speaks fondly of being in a pub in Teignmouth, Devon, on a cold winter’s day, cradling a cup of soup while wearing her Blackheath beanie and three old chaps at the bar started sharing memories of Rectory Field with her.
Since Covid, she has gone to most away games and has seen plenty of highlights, too many to pick a favourite, though she said that last season’s play-off win against Plymouth has to be right up there. She also enjoyed the season in National Two, when she could explore new clubs. “The weekend in Guernsey was a mini tour,” she said.
Pam with some of the regular travelling supporters
And that brings us to our latest opponents. It has been a long time since we last met in a competitive match: 21 years, almost to the day, when Bedford won 61-0 in a cup game. The most recent league encounter was in 1998, when they won 72-31. They put 70 points past us in the cup that year, too, and in the previous league season.
A scoreline like that might stretch even Pamela’s famous sunniness, but she prefers to be optimistic. Last season began with a friendly away to Bedford, where Blackheath were competitive for 70 minutes and someone called Harding scored a try from a rolling maul. Perhaps this time, if we cling to their coat-tails, we can finally close out the match and the ground can hear Pam gleefully announce: “And the winning try scored for Blackheath by…”
PAM INTERVIEWING GRAHAM FOR COXY’S CORNER
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