Happy New Year to all readers and I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and welcomed 2013 in style. Having basked in the good news of our successful funding applications, now comes the hard reality that we have to deliver the plans. There is no short cut here as if we fail to meet the targets we have agreed then our funding will be reviewed and likely reduced. That is not something I even want to contemplate because I believe we have a great opportunity to build something pretty special over the next cycle and I want to hit the ground running. So we have an action packed start to 2013. The domestic season kicks off on Saturday 19th with the first of the Coloplast Super Series tournaments at Stoke Mandeville. You will also see that we are putting on an Introductory Workshop on the Saturday which is aimed at anyone interested in learning more about the game – particularly those interested in volunteering and officiating. We will follow this up with a similar opportunity during Super Series 2 in February. We are also starting our consultation sessions where we want to share the plans we presented to our funders with you and to hear your views on how we best deliver these and support you. The first of these is for the South London and Eastern Region on 24 January followed by the North and Midlands which will take place before the DMG on 31 January. Then on Saturday 2 Feb we have the first ever rugby tournament in the new Life Centre at Plymouth where Plymouth and Cardiff Pirates will get together for a match. It is really exciting to see a new club get to this stage and we want to support it as strongly as we can. Of course one of the main activities over the coming months is appointment of people to the new positions which have been advertised over the last month. Applications for the RDO posts closed on 4 January and I am pleased to report that we have over 50 applications for the 3 positions. We also have 2 very strong applications for the Head Official posts so we should get great people into all of these jobs. The closing date for the Head Coach and Performance Director positions is not until 21 January but there is some good interest in both and I have been contacted over Christmas by a number of potential candidates so I am hopeful that some, if not all of these will apply. Meanwhile I am head down putting together the next 4 year strategic plan which will be detailing our key priorities over the next cycle and setting ourselves the hard targets we must achieve. I will be meeting with the Board of Trustees this Thursday who are giving up an afternoon to contribute to this process, the results of which I will be sharing with you at the consultation events. Have a great start to 2013 and good luck in your preparations for the start of the Super Series.
David Pond
