Sleaford
Ian Sharpe, Impulse Channel Controller at Addo Food Group and Sleaford
Rugby Club Alumni, said:
“We are thrilled to be supporting a local team in its quest for greatness. From all
of us at the Addo Food Group, we would like to wish the team all the best for the
upcoming season, we’ll certainly be cheering
Atmosphere
“We celebrated our 40th Anniversary
last year and in that time we have grown
from a group of men playing rugby to
having teams at every age group in the
minis and juniors, ladies team, touch
rugby and the next step is to develop
junior girls.
Our ladies now are an established league
team who are improving year on year.
We have a very strong mini and junior set
up too. Our senior men have two teams
on a regular basis and are doing ok, but
with new coaches getting involved there
is new vigour in the senior men’s set
up trying to establish a strong winning
team.”
2019
“We have just installed new floodlights
and posts on one of our pitches which
enable more teams to train in the evening
and the posts give our junior teams
another pitch to play on as well. We are
running touch rugby for most of the year
now instead of just summer.
We are trying to improve the general
grounds and playing surfaces and for
the first time in many years we have
some spare funds to help improve the
grounds. We have four main pitches
and pitches for every mini team; with
six changing rooms as well we can host
big rugby events and would like to host
more.”
Youth
“This is one of our main strengths and
focus. We have excellent facilities for
the teams with each age group having
a pitch fully marked and, in some cases,
flags too. By the start of next season all
pitches will be marked and flagged.
We are putting all our coaches on level
2 RFU courses so we can provide the
best coaching we can to our junior and
mini players. We have also established
toddler rugby for the very young
players, it is a fun environment which
gives our youngest players a chance to
take up the beautiful game and capture
their imagination when young. Our
teams have had great success in the
past few years winning trophies and
getting to finals which is testament to the
coaches we have and the commitment of
the parents.” our facilities free of charge for large
fund-raising events and even given
money back to these events to do our bit
for the local community.
The bonfire night we hold is a great
community event, without it you would
have to travel many miles to find a
comparable display, the event has fair
rides, stalls and even free parking. Our
club house is offered to the community
to hire and gives a large venue to hold
events. Because we have floodlit grass
pitches our pitches are used by local
schools and RAF teams to play. Our
coaches also go to local schools and run
sessions at both primary and secondary
level.”
Integration Challenges/Ambitions
“We are trying to improve the way in
which we integrate young players into
the senior game and we know we need
to do better. We are trying to get our
colts team to join the senior mens last
thirty mins of training so both sides get
to know each other and also show each
side there is no surprise.
It is trying to show there is a pathway to
senior rugby for the players; we need to
get the players who are ready and willing
to play 2nd team and if good enough 1st
team hopefully. The good thing is we
recognise this and are starting to put
practices in place to improve this, which
in turn will improve our senior teams.” “Our biggest challenge is always raising
funds as we need the funds to improve.
Another challenge is establishing girls
junior teams; we ideally would like
two-three teams playing but it is hard to
recruit girls to the sport. We see our mini
section growing but even senior men’s
rugby is struggling on odd occasions to
put two teams out so the transition to
senior rugby is very important.
The main ambition is to have the junior
girls up and running and to aim for three
senior men’s teams out with a regular
weekly 1st, 2nd and a 3rd team who
maybe play every 2-3 weeks. We are
constantly wanting to improve facilities
and the car park is the biggest job, but
when done will hopefully make our
club into a premier venue not only for
rugby but also non-rugby events such as
meetings, parties and other events that
can contribute to the funds of the club.”
Community
“We are very much a community club;
we offer our facilities to other clubs to
use such as local cycling clubs, model
aircraft and car clubs. We have offered
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