I was watching the weather forecast on Thursday night and the presenter announced that summer was officially over. My wife looked at me waiting for a reaction because I am one of those people who really struggles with the winter – I just hate those dark mornings and the days closing in from mid afternoon, and I long for the bright blue Cornish skies of spring and summer. But at the moment I am so excited about all that we have going on in the sport that I have not got time to think about the impending gloom of winter! Take this weekend, we had Paul Arnold, Luke White and Stuart McLindon delivering wheelchair rugby sessions in the West Car Park at Twickenham for the London double header matches between Harlequins and Bristol and Saracens and Worcester. Despite the rain a number of people took the opportunity to get in a chair and experience wheelchair rugby. It is a sign of our growing relationship with Premiership Rugby that they supported this activity but also that we are already working with three of these 4 clubs as part of their own community foundations. Likewise on Friday night, the new Aviva Premiership season kicked off with Leicester playing Gloucester – both clubs already have their own wheelchair rugby teams. Later in the month we are delivering wheelchair safety and basic skills training to community coaches from the Premiership as part of a wider programme that they are managing. This is all great for our sport.
But of course the main cause of my excitement at the moment is the thought of Rio and I can’t wait for that opening game with Australia. Am I nervous? Yes. Anxious? Yes, but do I think we can take them? Yes I do! I was speaking with Mike Brown the other day and he commented that ‘to be the best, you have to beat the best’. Now that might be a bit of a cliché but it is true isn’t it? We are ambitious, we are hungry, and we are committed to being the best. The team has worked so hard since London 2012 and we are starting to see the results of our performance system. No-one pretends that we are the finished article – but we are on the trajectory to start breaking into the top 3 and maybe this is our moment. So I am excited – we are all sports people and so we all know that anything can happen and that’s what makes us keep coming back and believing. I was with the team on Friday at one of their final training sessions at Lilleshall and I was impressed with their composure and determination. The team arrived in Rio on Saturday evening and on Sunday morning social media was already alive with pictures of them settling into the Athlete’s village. I know that we all wish them the very best of luck in the competition.
Turning to a few business matters:
There were no proposed Members resolutions for the IWRF General Assembly in November and so we now await notification of any motions that other nations may wish the Assembly to consider. I will let you know when we receive these so that we can consult with you should there be any any relevant motion GBWR wishes to take a position on.
The IWRF is seeking applications from individuals interested in filling the role of Technical Delegate at IWRF competitions between 2017 and 2020 so if you are interested please see the note on the website outlining the procedure for applying.
We have are still doing a great deal of work towards our application for Sport England funding for 2017-21. Many of you will have been approached with a series of questions, the answers of which will help us to really understand more about why you play the sport, how you access it and some of the barriers you experience around access. All of this detail will greatly help us to present the best case we can for future funding and so a big thank you to those who have helped us with this.
Finally, it is always great to see the wider impact of our sport and the inspiration that comes from those who play it. This week I saw the piece that Johnny Coggan did for the Essex and Herts Air Ambulance Trust, which you can watch here:
Also this week Steve Brown featured as a mentor and key speaker at the national School Games , he goes on to Rio as a presenter for C4. I was also pleased to meet up again with Afghanistan veteran Stuart Robinson who was at Lilleshall with the GB squad ahead of joining us in Rio as part of the Paralympic Inspiration programme. Stuart has now left the Army and is part of our talent squad and the first to come out of the programmes we have delivered with the military. We are really looking forward to the many talents he will bring to the programme. Whilst at Lilleshall the squad shared some facilities with Woking Primary School FA, the children all got very excited about watching the GB team play and it was great to have their support and interest. Congratulations to all of them who worked hard at their training and also to their coaches and teachers who were there to support them.
That’s it for this week the next blog will be from Rio!
David Pond
