Rugby Club Issue 61 | Page 75

Staines Integration Community “We try to ensure young players enjoy a smooth transition into the senior game by making sure training nights during the week for the senior youth team are the same as the Seniors and managing the time slots. This will allow for the Senior players to get involved in assisting the youth with core skills and game understanding. Many of the senior players are involved in mentoring those youth players. There are very experienced and helpful parents who have been with the senior youth team for a number of years and it is important to keep this aspect of connection in the youths development. As part of the development process many of these upper youth players are involved with U17s/U18s County Rugby.” “I believe Staines is at the heart of the local community. In addition to providing many community groups with excellent internal facilities we are accredited to holding RFU coach education sessions. T h e s e facilities are also used by local groups which are very well attended. Our external facilities are used by local schools and universities, the armed forces, Middlesex County RFU England Women and England 7s as well as overseas national teams. Many local companies use our facilities for summer activities.” Challenges includes 5 pitches, a club house, bungalow and a large car park. To maintain such a large amount of property we are reliant on income streams. We need to juggle these income streams to allow coach and player development at all levels and continue our links with the All Schools project. To allow the community partnerships to develop and to keep the interest of young players interested it will be helpful if we could somehow have in place a modern all weather surface pitch. There is no doubt that our winters are becoming milder and wetter and we need to develop with our environment.” Ambitions “Over the next 5 years we must continue with club growth in all areas by developing more players, more coaches, better facilities and work in close partnership with our Rugby Development Officer and keep supporting all the new RFU initiatives. In order to achieve these ambitions we need to work on getting more income streams into the club through sponsorship. Maintaining our community links is also very important in our club development.” “We are in a unique situation where we own all 15 acres of facilities, which proud sponsors of www.sportip.biz 75