By the time you get to read this I will have pressed the Send button and our Sport England investment bid will be on the desks of those who will decide if we can help deliver the Sport England objectives we heard about in the summer. It has been a huge effort to get this plan presented in such a short timescale and Kirsty in particular merits special mention for all the work she has put into this. My thanks also to Lorraine who added the section on Talent and also to the Trustees who have played an important part in challenging me on elements of the plan. This has helped to strengthen it as well as test our capacity to deliver what we have set out. I am confident that the final result is a plan we can be proud of and we now wait, hopefully to hear the news from both Sport England and UK Sport that we have successfully achieved investment to take us through to 2021 and fulfil our promise to deliver more rugby to more people.
Whatever the result we still need to work hard at making ourselves less reliant on this sort of funding. Over the coming months I will be focusing on how we can broaden our income streams, and we already have some ideas as to how we might do this. I will also be meeting with all of our current partners in the hope that all will want to continue to support us. We have some great sponsors, not least BT, Roma Sport, Get Kids Going, the Middlesex Sports Foundation, the Saracens Foundation, the RFU and the Welsh Rugby Charitable Trust; without these and our fundraising efforts, we could not be providing as many opportunities as we do for people to play the game. It is equally important for our clubs to find their own local sponsors and partners. Some clubs are doing this really well and our RDOs are there to help all clubs develop their own marketing and sponsorship plans.
One of the new teams beginning to take shape is doing just that! The Northampton Saints Wheelchair Rugby Team will have 4 taster sessions in January and February at Weston Favell Academy Sports Centre. We will be supporting this activity by making sure we provide a qualified coach and chairs to really get this going. Simon Starr, the local RDO is doing a great job working with local volunteers to develop a Marketing Plan to get the message out about what’s on offer and seeking players, volunteers and sponsors. Northamptonshire Sport has been extremely supportive and will play a key role in the marketing plan, helping to communicate the opportunities across the county and their own networks. This is great example of how to develop a new club and provide opportunities to introduce a whole new group of people to our sport. Over the last few years it’s how clubs like Canterbury, Solent Sharks and Westcountry Hawks all began and it’s a real joy to see how with support such clubs can quickly develop. All of our clubs rely on a dedicated group of volunteers and I can never thank them enough for all they do to bring our plans, hopes and aspirations to life. Without club chairpersons, welfare officers and someone to look after the budget and book the venue there would be no rugby no matter how good or successful our bids to Sport England and others are.
This week you will have seen that Alan Ash has announced his retirement from international rugby. It is an incredible fact that he has been involved in successive teams for 22 years! He has experienced 5 Paralympic Games and been part of a remarkable change in the international game from its humble amateur beginnings to its elite professional status now. The demands and expectations of an elite athlete today are considerable and Alan has done amazingly well to have played throughout this period of change. His family also will have been part of his journey as the demands of training and being away from home for long periods impacts on family life. Alan will stay in the game and will coach at West Coast Crash – this is great news for us as we want to be able to use his experience and expertise for the benefit of the game and we want to support him as he transitions into new roles. That’s what lies behind our workforce development plans in the Sport England bid. We want to be able to provide more opportunities and training so that we have skilled and confident individuals who are able to take on the variety of roles that are needed in our sport. Our coaching qualification system is the start of that, but it does not end there we now want to do more for the development of officials and volunteers and we also need to look at how we develop the Performance Directors, Development Directors and Chief Executives of the future.
That’s it for this week, I am off to Germany in the morning for the IWRF General Assembly so will report back on that next week. Here’s to England beating South Africa at Twickenham tomorrow and to our ambassador Mike Brown having a great game.
