IT WAS a night of spooky fancy dress and fantastic fireworks at Chobham Rugby Club on Friday last week.

After the event had to be cancelled last year due to the pandemic, the village’s annual pyrotechnics extravaganza was back for its 28th year at the club, with 3,000 people enjoying the display at the Fowler’s Mead ground.

“Planning this year’s event created new challenges as we were concerned that other events locally had been cancelled, but we could not see any reason why we couldn’t put on the display,” said club chairman Mark Fisher.

“We took the decision to make the event advanced sales only, as we wanted to manage numbers attending and, conversely, ensure that we had a large enough audience. This worked brilliantly well, and we sold out on the Thursday.”

The evening began with a Halloween-themed fancy dress competition.

“The effort that went into the costumes made it a difficult decision to agree on a winner, who then went on to light the bonfire,” said Mark. “It was great to see that some of the mums and dads had joined in with some amazing fancy dress.”

With the bonfire fenced off, the young winners got to press a plunger to ignite the towering woodpile. As the flames jumped higher, so the clouds parted as if they too were ready for the display.

“Once the fire had started to die down the crowd started the countdown for the fireworks and what a display we had, 20 minutes of the most amazing fireworks set perfectly to music,” said Mark. “The feedback from some of the hundreds of families that attended was very positive and hopefully we will see them all again next year.

“The fireworks display raises much needed funds for the club that are pumped back into the provision of rugby across all ages and abilities,” he added.

“I would like to say a huge thank you to all the volunteers who put it all together and ran the evening and the local community and visitors that brought tickets and made the event such a success.

“I’m looking forward to 2022 already!”

For more pictures of the event, get the 4 November edition of the News & Mail – in shops today!