Updates from Steve Tarrant - Director of Rugby
I hope you have all recovered from the excesses of last weekend. It was a busy time for Breakthrough rugby.
On the Wednesday before the Sevens we entered a team in the Kowloon Tens. Some of the police lads joined some ex-Breakthrough boys and some of the current older lads to play. For the first time we won a couple of games and Gunny thinks we may have won more if two of the current lads didn’t have to go to school in the afternoon, robbing us of their services. It was a great experience and they all enjoyed the tournament dinner that night as well, where they got to meet all the other teams and enjoy some of the social aspects of the game.
On the same night, for everyone else, we had training and we had a visit from the Penguin coaches. Attached picture below of the boys being coached by some really world class coaches. We also had a visit from the Japan ladies coach and a couple of the Japan ladies team, who took our growing band of girls for a session. The girls really enjoyed it and the coach and his players were really great. They seemed to really enjoy it themselves and in chatting to the coach afterwards I realised he and I may have played against each other many years ago. He was in a Japanese Police and Fireman team, which came to HK in the early 80s and he played against the then RHKP at Boundary Street, when I would have been n my prime !!! Attached picture below of the girls and the coach and the two Japanese ladies.
On the Friday night we had about 90 kids go to the Sevens. Most went in two big groups and thanks to some donated Friday tickets those who could only get away later also managed to eventually join the fun. One group of the kids were unlucky enough to run into John Carroll in his police uniform outside the ground and their photo is below. Thanks to our title sponsors Standard Chartered Bank some of the boys were able to visit the SCB executive level box and enjoy the hospitality, where they were joined by some of the visiting rugby stars like Hugo Porta and Morne du Plessis, thanks to our link up with Laureus. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it but Tank tells me the food was excellent.
About 50 of the boys and girls were also able to attend on either Saturday or Sunday thanks to the donation of some tickets from friends and supporters of Breakthrough. Many thanks to everyone for their generosity. They all had a marvellous time.
Well the action continues, with tomorrow seeing another afternoon of touch with the Tuen Mun boys home kids. It starts around midday, so if anyone is around the Police Club on Boundary Street, please pop in. Robbie will be organising things along with Billy and Tank.
Next weekend we may have a friendly U16 game having been challenged by DEA, still smarting from the defeat they suffered recently against us. We are also in the final stages of organising the tour. We are off to Phuket with 25 kids and 5 helpers on Easter Sunday for four nights. We have two games arranged and when the boys were given a choice between visiting temples or going to the go-karting track and bungee jump on our day off, the temples surprisingly lost out! Anyway I will give you all a full run down nearer the time.