I’m not one to share much of my personal life but I just have to to say a very big thank you to all of you who have been so kind in sending me texts, emails, cards and phone messages of condolence on the death of my mum. Your thoughts really meant a great deal and reminded me again of how special the rugby family is.
My team has been brilliant as usual and activity continues to be frantic! We have now put the UK Sport investment bid to bed and we await decisions on funding which we will know on 9 December and which I will share with you as soon as I can. This week Kirsty and I have been working flat out on our Sport England bid. The deadline for submitting this is 14 November so we will be pushing the button on it next Friday. Our Sport England bid reflects our aspiration to continue to grow the sport over the next four years. We are presenting a plan which includes continuing support for our clubs, the further development of our workforce, both staff and volunteers, and covering important areas such as coaching and officiating, the continuing development of our youth programme, and our commitment to establishing the variant game so that we can provide more rugby for more people. It’s an ambitious but exciting plan and we will continue working on it over the next few days so that it is as strong a bid as possible.
Next Saturday sees me on the plane to Germany for the IWRF General Assembly which will provide an opportunity for us to catch up on the international agenda and to see what progress the IWRF board has made towards meeting its strategic plan objectives. It is also election time and we have Richard Allcroft standing to retain his IWRF board position and Mike Spence standing for the first time for one of the Member at Large positions – we wish them both every success.
It’s great to see that the new season has got underway and from all accounts the first Super Series for Division 2 was a massive success with Canterbury coming out on top. The result got me thinking of Jonathan Marsh who will be so proud looking down on you all!! I see from the results that there were some tight games and the GB Head Coach tells me that the standard was very high and that he spotted some new talent! I met with Paul this week along with Lorraine for his debrief of Rio and his plans for the next cycle. He gave a hugely impressive presentation and debrief and left me very excited about the future. I know that there is a lot of new talent out there and I am sure that when final selection for the new GB squad comes around in the spring it will be very competitive. I genuinely cannot see another international team with the depth of talent that we have. We know we are knocking on the medal door and I am confident that door will open during the next cycle.
Over the next few weeks there are some pretty exciting things going on. We have the first BT National Youth tournament on 19 November at Stoke Mandeville, this is a huge achievement led by Stuart McLindon and we will see 8 youth teams taking part. Games start at 11am and the tournament finishes as 5pm so if you have the chance drop by and support the stars of the future! We have our Talent squad going out to take part in the Prague tournament which I am sure they will be looking forward to after all the training sessions. We also have a number of sessions taking place as part of our military programme with the focus on the centres in Plymouth and Colchester, and it will not be long before the start of Super Series Division 1 at a new venue in Leicester on 3-4 December.
Finally I was pleased to learn this week that I have at least 2 followers of my blog, so to Paul Shaw’s dad and Kirsty’s mum a big thank you! I understand that I may get a third with Lorraine’s partner Dorinda thinking of logging on! Enjoy your rugby.
David Pond
