The end of October is always an opportunity for us to take stock. By then we have all of our financial data for the six months – April to September so we can see if we are keeping to our budget; and we are also able to review progress against what we said we would do in our business plan and see how we are getting on. This week I sat down with Kirsty Clarke and Bev Everton and we spent a day on this. We agreed that a lot of what we said we would do this year has been achieved already but as you would expect there is still much more to do in the second part of the year. We have prioritised this work and I have been able to put some additional money into giving more support to our clubs. Kirsty and Bev will be working with the Regional Development Officers – Lee Stutely and Amanda Thomas, to agree priorities for each club and then together we can just get on with it! We are about to build on the work started with the Military Rehabilitation units and will visit Headley Court on 26th November to introduce the game to a new group of potential players and supporters. The hope is to find individuals who will eventually be able to take up the sport and join our clubs. We also discussed how we can best show our appreciation to the many volunteers involved in the sport and any ideas you have for a ‘Valuing the Volunteer’ initiative would be welcome. This is something it would be good for the clubs to discuss and feed back through DMG representatives. Over the last two weeks we have completed our presentations to the Sport England and UK Sport Investment panels. The Sport England panel took an hour and a half and the UK Sport just over 2 hours and we were subjected to intensive and challenging questioning about our plans for the future and how we would meet the targets we have set out. I was very grateful to be supported by Kirsty for the Sport England panel and by our former Paralympian, Pirates player (still!) and Trustee, Mike Spence for the UK Sport panel. Both Kirsty and Mike made very good cases to support you and the sport. I will be informed of any funding offers in mid December. I will sign off by wishing London all the best for their AGM on 6 November and the same for the Prague squad as they enter the final couple of weeks before the tournament.
David Pond
