I have always felt very privileged and honoured to be chair of the Board of GBWR. However, unfortunately the last few days can only be described as heartbreaking; my feelings of sadness and emotion are only tempered by my anger at the decision by UK Sport to no longer fund the elite end of wheelchair rugby here in Britain. This is a decision that not only has the potential to damage the hopes and dreams of our hard working athletes but, inevitably, it will also have an impact on the wider wheelchair rugby community in this country.
As acknowledged by UK Sport, the last four years have been about introducing new infrastructure into the game to allow us to genuinely compete at the highest level. We have made significant strides in achieving this as evidenced by the performance of the team in Rio where we were quite literally the roll of a wheel and six seconds away from reaching the semi-final. I suspect you will all agree that the gap to the top four teams is becoming ever smaller and I have always been confident that this trend will continue. If our world ranking had fallen or our performance levels had gone backwards, I could understand the UKS decision; but that is not where we are, which makes it even more difficult to understand why all of the hard work and funding from the last four years seems to have been so easily cast aside.
We all know that UK Sport is tasked by the Government to deliver sporting success and they do of course operate under very challenging financial conditions. However, surely in a developed society where we are striving for equality for all, it should be about far more than just counting the number of medals. Whilst there can be no guarantees, I am confident that a combination of the talent of our athletes and continued funding would have given us an excellent chance of being on that podium in Tokyo. UK Sport themselves have acknowledged that they have been impressed with what has been achieved and that they recognise that we have podium potential. Not withstanding the financial challenges, this in itself makes their decision hard to understand; as David Pond, our CEO, said in his article in Saturday’s Guardian, if they had taken £100,000 from each of the Sports that have been given such large funding allocations, they would have more than made up the £2m that we needed for wheelchair rugby. Would the Governing Bodies of those sports really have objected if they had been told that their allocation would be reduced by £100,000 (only £25,000 per year) to allow GBWR to also be funded? I suspect not!!
In David Pond we are fortunate to have a fantastic CEO and, as a Board, we will work with David and his team to ensure that we explore every avenue to find a way of allowing GBWR to continue to be competitive on the world stage. However, we have to be realistic and without the funding to provide a world class performance programme, being competitive at the very highest level will be a very big challenge.
We all know that wheelchair rugby is a relatively small but very close community. The elite end of the game is inevitably the focus for the wider sport, not least for attracting volunteers and players, both of which are essential to the long term sustainability of GBWR; as such, the impact of losing the UK Sport funding is less than ideal. However, I am confident that by working together we will be able to address the challenges thrown up by the UK Sport decision and that we will emerge an even stronger sport.
On behalf of the Board, can I also take this opportunity to wish you and your families our best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.
Kevin Aitchison
Chair
