It was a great Super Series weekend at Stoke Mandeville with 11 teams taking part. It is fantastic to experience the real energy and enthusiasm that the SS brings and even more so as the new clubs join the tournament and we see new players, and many young players, taking part and enjoying the competition. Despite Crash coming out on top of Division 1 at the weekend with 12 points and Storm taking second place with 9 points, after two of the series, Storm top the league edging ahead of Crash by one point. Crusaders are also in the hunt and are in 3rd position, just one point behind Crash. Division 2 sees WC Burn top the league after 2 series with 20 points with Bulls just one point behind them. There were some close games in Division 2 particularly the Bulls Dragon clash and the Bulls Burn game. We also ran a very successful Volunteer workshop at the tournament with 15 new volunteers taking part – thank you to all who helped with this. We are now looking to help those volunteers join their nearest club and the RDOs will lead on this. It was also good to see our friend and partner Jane Emmerson, the Chief Executive of the charity Get Kids Going come to see us. She and I have worked together over the last three years to identify how best she can support our sport with chairs and other funding. She is a great supporter for us and we are lucky to have her. On Saturday she again pledged to help us over the next cycle and so I will be working with her to achieve this.The post London interest remains high and we are working hard to ensure we capture this and continue to build on the 2012 legacy. We also have a number of Physios who have come forward who are interested in becoming classifiers. We will run a classification workshop at the Nationals so that we can capture this interest as well. New clubs, players, classifiers, volunteers – all clear evidence that we are really starting to make an impact with our development initiatives and this should accelerate now that the RDOs have started. There have been other great events this past week. Well done to Bulls, especially Graham and Noel, who ran the Durham University talent day where about 50 people took part. This was a good introduction to the sport for Jo our RDO for the north as well as those who took to the chairs. We also had another great session at Headley Court – thanks especially to RDO Amanda Thomas and Trustee Mike Spence for helping deliver this to our military rehab friends, 9 of whom took part. They were joined at the end by the Army rugby team who were visiting ahead of their annual clash with the Royal Navy at Twickenham which the army went on to win. That’s enough from me now as I head over to the British Paralympics Association for a meeting of the paralympic sports.
David Pond
