I hope by now that you will have logged on to www.wwrc15.com where the schedule for October is now available. It promises to be a stunning opening match with the USA and Canada battling it out to get an early advantage. The iconic Murderball film featured these two nations and I am sure the match in October will be as exciting and adrenaline fuelled as the one the film depicts. GB will open their account after this match by taking on France in what should be another great encounter. We are making some good progress towards the tournament with the next big announcement due in March when we will launch our ticket campaign. Ensure you are registered at www.wwrc15.com for your tickets. Based on what we already know we are expecting early sales to be high.
Last weekend GB players Johnny, Bully, Nick, Chris, Gavin, Jamie, Manni and Paul formed a small squad and took part in a tournament in Germany where they had convincing wins against Switzerland, Germany and Poland. Tomorrow Switzerland will arrive for 4 games in Leicester where Mohammed, Coral, Mike, Gavin, Alan, Manni, Ayaz and Jamie will play. These are great opportunities for athletes and coaches to try new things out as well as help to develop players.
I hope some of you will have seen our piece on the website about volunteering. We have had a fantastic response to our online volunteer application process and there are some really great candidates coming forward to help support us as we continue to grow the game. Our sport has always relied heavily on volunteers and we are fortunate to have so many great ones but we now need even more! The BT National Championships, WWRC15 Community Event and BT WWRC15 should be fantastic experiences for existing and new volunteers. To support our volunteers we are also providing some structured training. This week we held introductory workshops for mechanics – led by GB Head Mechanic Doz Preece and for officials led by GB Head Official Brian Ward. All sessions were well attended particularly by volunteers from some of our newest clubs such as Dorset who we welcome into our rugby family. These occasions are also important opportunities to share knowledge and experiences which we can all benefit from. A big thank you to Doz and Brian for leading in their field of expertise and also to partners Gloucester University who provided the facilities to deliver the workshops.
We also continue to progress our coaching strategy and last week held the Technical Coaching Group which made some real progress in developing the principles of the sport as well as working on compiling the technical elements ready for the coaching qualification. All of the above is fantastic development work and we are now really beginning to fill the gaps we knew we had in these critical development areas. Thank you to Kirsty and the RDOs who are leading the drive in these critical areas.
I had the pleasure of meeting up with the IWRF Board of Directors and the Chairs of the IWRF Committees – Classification, Competitions, Development and Technical this week. They had a very constructive planning session in England which was supported by Steve Griffiths from World Rugby. It was also good to have some time with Jens Sauerbier the new Athletes Representative and Chair of the new Athletes Council. This is a very important role (previously was held by our own Ross Morrison) and provides a direct voice for players. If you go to www.iwrf.com you can find details of the role of the Athletes Council as well as other international news.
As I write this I am sure all teams are focused on training for the second of the Super Series weekends. This weekend will see the D2/3 do battle followed by Division 1 on 21/22 February. The best of luck to all teams in what I know will be an enjoyable weekend.
David Pond
