It has been another really good week with lots going on so thought I would give you a bit of an update. Our development work continues at quite a pace and over the last week the South London taster sessions started in partnership with the Weir-Archer Foundation – our thanks to our London club for supporting this. We also were able to run two sessions at Colchester as part of our Military Recovery Centre programme for which we are supported by Help 4 Heroes – thanks here to Steve Brown and Chris Ryan who coached these and who went down well with the military. Our partnership with Gloucester rugby was also in the headlines again last weekend when Gloucester rugby officially launched the EDF sponsorship at the Gloucester Quins game. And what a weekend for our Ambassador Mike Brown, again named as RBS Man of the Match and who is really turning out to be the star of the 6 nations. Mike will be doing some more with us after the championship finishes. Thank you also to Rob Tarr – what a star he is!! He has been helping to deliver some of our RugbyWheels programme to a wide range of disability groups up in Derbyshire supported well by RDO Jo Arnold – this is all great work and brings life to our charity’s mission and our core values.
Much of my time over the past week has been progressing the World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge event. Although still ‘under the radar’ and yet to be officially launched there is a great deal of planning and preparation under way. Following a competitive process, this week we appointed The Graphic Design House in Portsmouth as our brand designers. They presented a number of brand concepts to us this week and we have sent them away to do a little more on two designs from which we will select one to be the WWRC15 brand. I am also working with our marketing consultant Colin Farmery on sponsorship which is critical to the delivery of this tournament as we are aiming for the highest quality event. It was great to have Eron Main, the Secretary General of the IWRF over this week to discuss the WWRC15 in some detail and he was also able to take part in the review of brand proposals. I have to admit to being very excited about what we are planning for the WWRC15 and will look forward to telling you more about it as it develops. I am currently in discussions with some key figures over the launch of the tournament which we want to be spectacular! More later!
Looking ahead and we welcome Sweden to the UK during the weekend of 8 March. The GB squad will train with them with a final full game starting at 1030 on Sunday 9th. All spectators welcome for this friendly match. The following weekend sees Division 1 of the Coloplast Super Series start up gain. Sarah Leighton will also be in action on 8 March at the Rockwood Spinal Injury Unit where she will run a workshop for classifiers. Next week I am also looking forward to meeting up with the DMG and our coaches in Leicester to have a bit of a joint session so I can hear views about how they think our various initiatives are going and I can provide a bit more detail of some of the exciting things to look forward to.
Finally, do keep your comments on the new website coming through to Daniel and please do send us news and photos to upload. I was reading the other day that Google push out new products even when they are not yet perfect and then use the feedback to rethink, reconsider and change – that is very much our idea with this site and so any comment on how we can improve it is very welcome. Have a great week.
David Pond
