Pictured wearing one of the new Cotswold Homes shirts is the captain of Thornbury RFC’s First XV, Sam Evans (second from right), with (left to right) David Parry-Jones who organises the club’s fundraising and sponsorship, Liam Rinn, land director at Cotswold Homes, and club chairman Geoff Sprackman.

Rugby players in a leading South Gloucestershire club have a new look this season, thanks to a local housebuilder.

Yate-based Cotswold Homes Ltd has sponsored new kit for Thornbury Rugby Football Club’s First XV players, together with six spare shirts, as the firm’s latest gesture of support which spans 15 years.

The link was established in 2003 by Cotswold Homes’ land director, Liam Rinn, who is a former Junior and First XV player with the club. Subsequently, three of the Junior section players he coached for three years are now members of Thornbury RFC’s First XV.

The new kit was first seen last month when Thornbury beat Newent RFC whose team, by a strange quirk, included Cotswold Homes’ new quantity surveyor Charlie Gellert.

‘Long-term local sponsorship of this type is all part of our policy of putting something back into the communities where we do business,’ explained Cotswold Homes’ head of sales and marketing, Terri Hayes-Pugh.

‘In addition to schools, scouts and sports clubs we have supported two local charities in recent months. They are Jessie May, which provides hospice at home care for terminally ill children, and Julia’s House whose hospice in Devizes provides a support network for families caring for a child with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition.’

Recently Cotswold Homes invited friends, colleagues and residents to its headquarters as well as its developments in Corsham and Broughton Gifford to mark Macmillan Cancer Support’s World's Biggest Coffee Morning which enabled the firm to send a £2,000 cheque to the charity. Now the firm is investigating local charities it might support once it has taken the wraps off its plans for two new South Gloucestershire developments in Chipping Sodbury and Tytherington.