There is no loss of momentum as we near the end of year 3 of our current sports business plan. I have mentioned before that we are deep into preparing new 4 year investment plans in the hope that we can once again achieve successful funding from our principal funders, UK Sport, the Lottery and Sport England. We have already submitted our Tokyo proposal to UK Sport and are expecting some early feedback in May though it will not be until post Rio that we know whether we have been successful in achieving future funding. Sport England will not be publishing their funding criteria until around June and so although we are already thinking about this we will be putting together our submission over the summer. Meanwhile we continue to deliver some really great activity!
The first ever #ThisGirlCan all female wheelchair rugby session took place at Loughborough College on 19th March. Ladies from across the country came together in this landmark for the sport as they played in the inaugural female only tournament, an event GBWR looks forward to running annually. Supported by current GB player Coral Bately along with 2012 star Kylie Grimes the ladies were also joined by England ladies Rugby World Cup winner Laura Keates. Celebrating Sport England’s #ThisGirlCan campaign the day highlighted just how important it is to ensure that the sport of wheelchair rugby encourages women to get involved.
One of the important things that our GB funded athletes do as a condition of their funding is to undertake a whole range of public appearances to promote the sport and to inspire others to take up sporting activity. Most recently you may have seen the fantastic work that the GB squad did in Rio where they linked up with school children and gave them a chance to experience the sport. More recently, Ayaz Bhutta did a short presentation on WC the sport at Tauheedul Islam boys school in Blackburn. The school was looking for a local Muslim sports person to inspire the children to take up sports & take it seriously rather than play football during P.E class. Ayaz spoke to around 150 students from year 10 & 11 students.
Last night some of you may have seen Ayaz, Coral, Alan, Jim and Chris on BT Sport’s Rugby Tonight. This gave another great opportunity to promote our game alongside rugby union and we had a friend in Martin Bayfield who presented the programme and of course presented BT WWRC15.
Lots still happening over the next few weeks starting with Super Series 3 on Saturday where Division 1 battle it out in Walsall followed a week later by Division 2 at Stoke on Trent. As always we will also be supporting the Spinal Unit Games in Stoke Mandeville between 11-15th April. Then comes the Tri-Nations tournament in Leicester the weekend of 15-17th April. This is primarily a training weekend though the teams will compete with GB taking on Sweden and Canada. Come and watch and bring your families – it will be the only time you can see GB in action in this country before the Paralympic Games. We will also be running a community programme alongside this event and are already working with schools in the area. Whilst all this is going on Jinx is working hard to train the Invictus GB team who will be off to Orlando in early May for the second Invictus Games. This is clearly going to be a regular in the calendar as the Invictus Committee has already announced that Toronto will host the tournament in 2017.
That’s all for now and best of luck to the teams training this week ahead of Super Series 3.
David Pond
