The new season is now under way with Division One playing at Fenton Manor in Stoke this weekend and Division 2 starting their league games in Leicester a week later. A big thank you to Coloplast who continue to sponsor the Super Series as they have done for many years. This season’s leagues will stretch into the spring of 2014 as we continually evolve the competition to manage the growth in teams participating. It is a great position to be in and with so many new initiatives bringing more people into our sport we can expect to see more new clubs starting up this season. In recent weeks Kirsty and her RDOs have been working with new groups in the Gloucester and Preston areas and I am excited to see that our game is now getting a footprint in the far West Country where my own home is. Plymouth Hawks is well established but we are about to move even further West to provide opportunities for people to experience the game in Cornwall and we will deliver some sessions in Exeter where there is real interest. A big thank you to all players who have been helping to put on these sessions.
Congratulations to the The Leicester Tigers Wheelchair Rugby Club which has now been officially launched by the Premiership club and has its own section on the Tigers website. Tigers intend to present the team to supporters at an Aviva Premiership fixture. Our thanks to Matt Hampson and his team who has worked to forge this partnership which may be a model for similar work we are doing with other clubs. www.leicestertigers.com/news/17759.php
This week we have been working with Onshore our media partner on the development of a new GBWR website. As everyone knows, technology moves on so quickly that it is really important to make sure that all of our communications stay fresh and exciting. This is particularly true for our website as it is our main shop window to the sport for those who want to find out about it as well as being our main tool to communicate with Members and partners. Our current website is now nearly 4 years old and things have moved on in that time, not least with tablets and social media really taking a hold on things. Broadly speaking my thinking around our website is in part determined by how much we can afford to spend on promoting our sport and so I am working on the basis of regular content updates and in year refreshes of the site with a complete website rebuild every 4 years to link in with the regular 4 year review of our overall strategy. Hopefully you will like what you see when the new site launches towards the end of the year. It is early days in its development but already it is looking bright and bold, it will be much easier to navigate than the current site as well as being integrated with social media. If anyone has any good quality photographs or images that we can use on the new site please let Daniel have them.
Last season in the build up to London there was a lot of investment in our Table Officials as we upskilled them in preparation for the important role they were to play in 2012. Things continue to move on with establishing a more professional officiating pathway and I would like to congratulate Brian Ward our Head of Officiating for the great work he has done to produce the first draft of the GBWR Officiating Pathway which covers both Table Officials and Referees. This documents the route from first being interested in becoming an official through to training, awards and the various levels from apprentice through to international. This excellent piece of work has now been passed to the IWRF for their review and we hope to be able to incorporate any comments they have and then get on with implementing the system. This is another great example of how we are moving the game on to ensure we are able to provide good experiences for those who watch, play and officiate the game.
That’s all for this week – good luck to all teams in round one of the Super Series.
David Pond
