Strategy, Coaching Conference, Awards Night...
Gregg Cropper
Skilled and influential senior leader with over 10 years of experience in Sport Sector
Upon reflection, the super busy week planning and delivering a number of fantastic events over one weekend has been a huge success and building on what is going to be a great legacy for these going forwards.
Assess | Create | Execute
ACE, our annual strategy weekend was attended by members of the #EnglandTouch workforce, committee and board members alike, to review what we've achieved, celebrating our successes, together, and looking at how we can enhance what we do, together. We ran SWOT analysis on major areas, to discover new opportunities whilst managing and eliminating threats.
Key themes covered in were:
- Culture - We are one team, with one goal, with one message. We are ambassadors for England Touch and our brand.
- Strategic Plans - High-level feedback on priorities / challenges
- Organisational Sustainability - Finance, Risk etc
- Opportunities to Participate - Elite (HP), Competitive (NTS), Grassroots
- Delivery - Workforce, regional hubs
Lots of exciting plans to look forward to, with a strong group of people looking to push our ambitions forward into reality over the next few years.
Coaching Conference
The inaugural Touch Coaching Conference also ran over both Saturday and Sunday with a plethora of experienced internal and external speakers spreading their knowledge to an enthusiastic filled room of budding coaches, huge thanks to Sammy Phillips and the High Performance team on the work helping to pull this together. A fantastic turn out for our first ever Coaching Conference with 15 speakers and over 70 attendees from within England and from across Europe too.
"The Conference was spectacular and that can only happen when a whole load of effort goes in behind the scenes! Seeds sown this weekend will have an amazing harvest over many years to come!"
Awards Night
England Touch celebrated a memorable year at the Awards Dinner at Twickenham, with the 2019 #OneEngland Awards handed out at a special dinner, as we look to celebrated in style at this black tie event.
Touch in England is thriving! This is not least due to the efforts of our army of volunteers, who are the backbone to our sport, expending their time and energy in driving our sport forwards.
Our volunteers are everywhere: coaching, refereeing, performing back-office functions, washing kit and everything in between, allowing all our participants to do what they love at a social, development or competitive level.
The work of volunteers is crucial to all sports, especially an emerging sport such as Touch. Rewarding their efforts is so important and is the reason that our #OneEngland programme has been established to recognise the contribution of these unsung heroes and going forward it will be firmly establishing itself in the annual Touch calendar. Throughout the year, hundreds of volunteers work thousands of hours to grow our sport, locally, regionally and nationally and we want to recognise the hard work and achievement of those involved in sport across the country.
We're coming to the end of what has been a magnificent year for England Touch. Some of our achievements include:
- Finishing third overall at the 2019 World Cup, with two bronze medals and a host of top four finishes in individual categories
- An unprecedented clean sweep of all four categories at the 2019 Junior Touch Championships, with 27 out of 29 matches won and the other two drawn
- More players than ever before putting themselves forward for England selection
- More clubs competing in our National Touch Series events
- More coverage on BBC Sport Online
Congratulations to all our nominees and winners.
Your 2019 #OneEngland ?? winners!
- Sports Achiever of the Year. Matt Mahoney
- Inspiring Others Award. Kevin Hattersley
- Referee of the Year, sponsored by ACME Whistles. Gareth Hinds
- Unsung Hero. Aisling Musgrove & Julian Gilding
- Volunteer of the Year, sponsored by TeamKinetic. Max Raymond & Pippa Bourke
- Young leader of the year. Evan Michaels
- Coach of the Year, sponsored by Belief Sports. Alastair Chadwick
- Club of the Year, sponsored by Steeden. Nottingham Touch Club
- Special Recognition. Cari Thorpe
Onwards and onwards!
Works Director at Frank Blakeley & Son Ltd
5 年Hey Greg Bare us in mind if you ever need any printed t-shirts or any time of garments Cheers James Blakeley.
Executive Coaching, Supervision and Training
5 年Touch rugby has gone through so many false dawns and never really got traction - Rugby X got loads of publicity only due it being well funded - as Andy says get the money right for the first time and do it properly this time. Good luck
Founder and CEO Invest in Health A portfolio of brands coming to retail, sport, wellbeing, fitness and tech in 2025/26.
5 年Have England Touch ever bid for a big grant of say ￡5m?If not it needs to do so to go to the next level as I guarantee a big consumer brand would come in and match fund a 5 year plan. Game changer and needs to happen.