There is some really great rugby to look forward to this weekend. For the Talent Squad it starts today with their first game in the Prague Tournament against Les Mousqetaires, which is pretty much the French team. GB has been drawn in Group B which also includes Avengers, which is comprised of some of our own GB national team, Maniacs, a sort of barbarians team, and the Germany Development squad. Group A has the European Giants, another barbarian make up, Germany, the national team, Danish Dynamite, the Danish national team, Switzerland, the national team, and the Flying Dutchmen, also a national team. So you can see this is a pretty tough tournament for us but just the sort of competition and exposure our Talent team need as they take on some of the top players in Europe. It’s also a chance for some of them to really stake a claim on a place in the GB national squad which will be selected in the spring.
The squad sees some of our newest faces taking part such as Stuart Robinson who has come from the military programme and Invictus, and Charlie Hetherington from Gloucester who is starting to make a name for himself. The full Prague team is: Ciaran Pryce Caledonian Crushers; Daniel Kellett RGC; Jack Smith Marauders; Nick Cummins Tigers; David Ross Solent Sharks; Matt Sullivan Tigers; Daniel Dawoud Crash; Matt Hignett LWRC; Gary Scholes Marauders; Ollie Mangion Canterbury; Charlie Hetherington Gloucester; Stuart Robinson Ospreys. As I look at this squad, the really encouraging thing for our game is that I only recognise one name that was playing back in 2012 – all the rest are new players, even better, apart from 3 players, they all come from clubs which did not exist back then – this is so promising and shows the real impact our development programmes are having and the great work being done by the RDOs and the volunteers they support in the clubs.
Another positive sign for the future of our sport and further club development is the BT Youth programme which this weekend will see the second national tournament take place at Stoke Mandeville. Teams from Exeter Hawks, Ospreys, Solent Sharks, Northampton and Bristol will take part alongside defending champions Saracens, a school team supported by the Saracens Sports Foundation. The action starts at 1100 on Saturday.
I spent last weekend in Frankfurt at the IWRF General Assembly where you will have seen that Richard Allcroft was re-elected to the IWRF Board. This is great news for us as it puts us at the heart of decision making for the world game. Mike Spence also did well coming second in the first ballot but then going out at the next as IWRF Members, perhaps understandably, stood back from electing a second GB representative to the board and favouring instead Gary Pate from the USA. We heard that there are now 29 countries registered by the IWRF and of these 24 were represented at the Assembly.
The Assembly discussed a variety of issues and heard from all the IWRF Committees and a number of delegates. Jennie Cole the CEO Disability Sports Australia gave a great update on the plans for the 2018 IWRF Wheelchair Rugby World Championships which will take place in Sydney between 5-10 August 2018. You can find out more about this by going to the newly launched website www.2018WRWC.com . John Timms also briefed about the qualification process for the Worlds and explained that it is a 12 team tournament and in addition to the hosts and the zonal qualifiers there will be a qualification tournament with the top 4 from this going through to the worlds. There are also some interesting developments aimed at revising the world ranking system by introducing a points based system in 2018. And there was a workshop on the variant game with the majority of nations reporting that they are also involved in some way with different versions of the game. So lots happening on the world stage and I will upload the record from the Assembly as soon as I get it.
That’s it from me this week. The best of luck to all taking part in this weekend’s tournaments and to the Division 1 clubs as they train and prepare for December’s Super Series in Leicester.
David Pond
