Healthy Stadia
The “Healthy Stadia Conference”, taking place in The Arena and Convention Centre, Liverpool, is the first ever European wide Healthy Stadia Conference and shows the recognition sport is getting as a tool for dealing with social and community issues.
Using sports stadia as a hub for broadcasting messages and educating consumers can be particularly effective, as it provides a channel to reach those who are often least well informed about maintaining their own health: men. Statistics show men are less inclined to see a doctor than women and have different needs when it comes to communication of health information to men. Stadia are, therefore, ideal ways of reaching this audience as those who visit sport stadia are disproportionately male.
Premier Rugby Limited sees the Healthy Stadia Conference as an innovative way of moving forward the debate about clubs and community.
Warriors npower Inclusive Tag Programme: Video
Here’s a video about the Worcester Warriors npower Inclusive Tag Programme, which just won the Impact Award at the 2009 Citizenship Awards:
Andy Reed MP on the value of grassroots sport
Andy Reed MP, a keen rugby supporter and judge of our annual Parliamentary Citizenship Awards, spoke last week at a Men’s Health Forum event in Manchester about using sport and sport stadia to improve men’s health. Rugby players can be great role models! Here’s the video:
Saracens and Bath share Community ‘Club of the Year’ Title
On Wednesday, representatives from Bath Rugby, Saracens and Newcastle Falcons all came to Portcullis House at Parliament to give presentations on their community work in front of a panel of judges in order to determine which club should be Community ‘Club of the Year.’
This whole process started last week, when a panel of assessors shortlisted Bath, Saracens and Newcastle for Club of the year and also determined the winners of the Innovation and Impact Awards, two new awards this year for individual programmes clubs are running.
The assessors included representatives from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Department of Health, Positive Futures, and the CSR Department of BT Wholesale. They reviewed materials that clubs submitted through Business in the Community’s Clubs that Count tracker.
They awarded Bristol Rugby with the Innovation Award (for an innovative new programme started in the past 12 months) for its Inferno Programme, which tackles social inclusion by teaching rugby (and life) skills to young offenders at HMP Ashfield. Bath Rugby and Sale Sharks were also highly commended for their Language Through Sport and School of Hard Knocks programmes respectively.
Newcastle Falcons won the Impact Award (for an established programme able to demonstrate the positive impact it’s making on its community) for its Touch Rugby programme, which gets 950 adults active each year (40% of which are female, 35% of which haven’t done any form of physical activity in past year). Bath Rugby was also highly commended for its Wilts / Sportsmatch Girls Rugby Programme.
And then for the main event this past Wednesday: Bath Rugby, Saracens and Newcastle Falcons all gave their presentations before the judging panel, which included Derek Wyatt, Paul Farrelly, and Andy Reed, MPs from the All-Party Parliamentary Rugby Group, as well as Louise Poole, Head of Sponsorship at EDF Energy, Tanja Rasmussen, Community Investment Campaign Director, and Mark McCafferty, Chief Executive of Premier Rugby.
The judges were impressed by the scale and scope of the community work they saw, and by the partnerships and investments the clubs have been making in their communities. In the end they awarded the ‘Club of the Year’ award to both Saracens and Bath Rugby—Saracens for their sheer professionalism and the way their community foundation that has continued to grow and innovate, and Bath for how far they’ve come in such a short time period and the way they put community work into the ethos of the club.
All the awards were presented at an evening reception at the House of Commons.
From left: Gordon Banks and Hannah Pirnie from Saracens, Louise Poole from EDF Energy, Jimmy Deane from Bath Rugby
Up next on the blog I’ll be posting the Powerpoint presentations from the finalists and video of the judges so you can hear what they thought in their own words.
Cystic Fibrosis Trust vs. Lords & MPs at Twickenham
Had the chance to watch a cracking charity match at Twickenham last week between a team representing the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and the Commons and Lords RFC. The Cystic Fibrosis Trust team beat the Lords and MPs 17-7. The CF Trust team included Joshua Jones, a singer with Cystic Fibrosis (right in the photo below), and RFU Elite Rugby Director Rob Andrew was honorary captain of the MPs and Lords (left in photo).
Learn more about the Cystic Fibrosis Trust here; there’s also more about the match on the RFU site here.
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About Professional Rugby in the Community
I'm Wayne Morris, Community Manager for Premiership Rugby. This blog is a place for me and the Community Development Officers from around Aviva Premiership Rugby to share the community work our clubs are doing and talk about some of the issues we're trying to solve through sport.
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