Last weekend the Pirates Wheelchair Rugby Club celebrated their silver jubilee – 25 years of playing the game and giving wheelchair rugby opportunities to those in Cardiff and beyond who have wanted to get in a chair and enjoy themselves. The club’s rich history stretches back to 1989 when Oswestry Battlers wheelchair rugby team helped stage a demo at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff. Debbie Stevens and Kath Jones, Physio and OT at Rockwood SIU had rounded up as many tetras as possible to attend. It was a great day and from it the Pirates were born with Keith Jones, then the only person playing the game in Wales, taking on the guidance of the team. It says a great deal about the sport and the special relationships forged in and around the game that all of these individuals continue to be behind wheelchair rugby in Wales today.
Pirates can rightly claim and be proud of their many achievements as a club over the years and of the major role they have played in the development of the GB national side. Initially only a small team, they soon became a force to reckon with in rugby circles, winning 4 national games titles, 5 league titles and 2 silver medals at European Club championship level. Over the years they have supplied 12 players to the GB team, with Paul Davies (Ace) later becoming the manager of the GB team. More recently, we have seen Paul Jenkins (who competed in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics) and Mike Spence (who competed in 2000 Sydney Paralympics) coach the first ever GB Armed Forces wheelchair rugby team to win gold medal at the London Invictus Games. This was an incredible achievement considering the short amount of time they had to build and coach a team from scratch.
Pirates were hugely influential in the development of Rugby in GB and Europe in the early days of the game. They had 3 officers and 2 members on the national executive committee in the 1990s (Paul Jenkins, Jon Nutman and Mike Spence with Paul Davies as GB Team manager and Keith Jones as an ordinary member). These individuals were key in developing the structure of the sport in Great Britain. They implemented charitable status for the original GBWR Association, applied, wrote and implemented the UK Sport Lottery WCPP, introduced a sports science programme for the elite and drove the development of sports science within the sport with links between the Pirates and UWIC. The Pirates were the first team to play major competitive rugby in Europe and from that had teams from Belgium and Sweden come to Wales to train with the team. That influence endures today with Mike Spence a member of the Board of Trustees where his sound common sense, passion for the game and leadership is highly valued by me and his Board colleagues.
An accident last week which saw me dislocate my shoulder and tear my shoulder muscles meant that I had to pull out of the weekend celebrations in Swansea but perhaps here I can use the opportunity to pay tribute to the many family members, friends and volunteers who have worked tirelessly to keep the club going over the years. We all know and understand that the life blood of clubs are the many individuals that help transport players, fund raise, coach, officiate, organise training book hotels, and do all of the jobs, many less attractive than others, but that come with the game. Thank you to all of you who have supported the Pirates over the 25 years.
As part of the celebrations, Pirates joined the charity The TREAT Trust to host a celebration tournament with teams from all 4 home nations. The event was a huge success with England getting a win over Wales in the final game of the tournament to take the TREAT Cup. A big thank you to Chris Williams from TREAT who helped stage the event and to Peter Lynn from Peter Lynn Partners who generously sponsored the occasion.
Finally a reminder that next week is the AGM and so I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Leicester on Wednesday for the meeting which starts at 5pm. This is followed the next day by our first coaching conference where amongst other things we will be setting out the programme for coach development – such exciting times!
David Pond
