It has been a great week which began at the weekend with the Europa Cup where London and Marauders were taking part. London won their 3 pool games and defeated Marauders in the crossover before losing in the final to FHI Falcons of Denmark. Marauders won 2 of 3 pool games before losing the crossover and went on to get 4th place. Congratulations to both teams and to Jonny Coggan, Bulbul Hussain and Ryadh Sallem all who were awarded best in their classes. Ryadh was also awarded MVP so definitely one to watch! From Europe we move to Stoke Mandeville where this week we have been at the annual Spinal Unit Games. A big thank you to Bob O’Shea, Justin, Steve Brown and everyone else who helped to support our involvement and to give those from the units the opportunity to try rugby. There were plenty of people having a go and we hope this will result in a few new players joining our clubs. The games also provided a chance for the new RDOs to see the sport up close and to start to make contacts with individuals and clubs. This week we took delivery of a batch of new chairs. 8 youth chairs have gone to Ashcraig School in Glasgow to support the programme there which is now well established following all the work Archie Palmer did last year. We hope this will result in new players for the Crushers. We have another 8 youth chairs which we will be using for our youth programme. We also took delivery of a further 11 adult chairs, these were funded from the separate bid we made to Sport England and we will be using these to put on demonstrations and to help new clubs and organisations get started in the sport. We are still looking to support clubs as much as we can where chairs are still needed and you will hear soon from Kirsty about the Chair Support Fund which will give every club the opportunity earn match funding for a chair. Basically if a club raises £3000, we will match it with a further £3000 – more from Kirsty later on this. This weekend the GB squad come together again in Leceister for a 4 day camp. Most of the new staff have now been appointed so it will be a good opportunity to start to build the new team that the Performance Director and Head Coach have put together and to get athletes working towards this year’s key tournaments. Thursday next week we hold our 4th session at Headley Court for those in the early stages of their rehabilitation; our involvement with military rehabs is about to increase. Finally next weekend it is of course Super Series 2 so good luck to all teams as you train this week and I look forward to catching up with many of you on Saturday.
David Pond
