Ilkley community programme is paying dividends but it needs more funding

From the archive, first published Thursday 9th Feb 2006.

As the first year of the Ilkley Rugby Club Community Rugby Coach scheme draws to a close the club is anxiously awaiting decisions from various funding bodies to gather the financial resources to enable it to continue.

Their applications so far for grant funding have fallen on stony ground despite the quality of the work completed and the many children and young people who have benefited from Dave Duxbury's expert coaching. So popular has his input been that a second coach had to be employed for part of the year.

Chairman Richard Scargill was undaunted, saying: "The club will move mountains to keep Duxbury in his post. It seems that the people of the Wharfe Valley are not a priority when funding for this kind of work is concerned. I'm afraid LS29 is not a great postcode to have in these circumstances."

Some measure of the success of the project so far was apparent this week. Large numbers of Ilkley Grammar School pupils were down at the Ilkley club to benefit from the floodlights and from after school training sessions.

These sessions are over and above curriculum time sport into which Duxbury also has an substantial input. An ever increasing number attend as the word gets around about the quality of the sessions.

Duxbury is confident that one of the mission statements of the project can be achieved next year. He firmly believes the Under-15 squad is now sufficiently accomplished to enter the Daily Mail Cup for their age group next year.

"Obviously the school authorities have to agree to it but it is definitely do-able," he said.

Another big step this week was a TAG rugby coaching course held by the RFU at Ilkley Grammar School. Such is the enthusiasm amongst the Ilkley area primary schools for the TAG rugby concept that ten teachers have volunteered their own time to go on the course. This will enable their schools to supplement the work Duxbury does with their own internal expertise. The Ilkley club is funding these courses.

Yet another tangible benefit from Duxbury's work in Bradford University, where he is the head coach, is the production of a university rugby development plan and along with that a number of students have achieved Tag and Level 1 Rugby coaching qualifications. This enables them to help the Ilkley club on Sundays and to reach out to inner city communities and provide coaching to disadvantaged children.

Duxbury has also enhanced his coaching range by achieving an FA coaching qualification.

He said: "Soccer coaching techniques have a lot to offer other sports including rugby as well as enabling me to offer a broader range of coaching as for individual schools."

Ilkley Rugby Club's sponsors of the Community Development Officer, Skipton Financial Services, Magellan Residential and Myddelton Construct-ion, have expressed delight with progress so far and will be backing the initiative again this year.

The funding gap is because the amount by which Sportsmatch matches the sponsors' money reduces from 100 per cent match funding by half for the next two years. For this reason the seed funding provided by Bradford Council has been an enormous help in balancing the books, but they can easily recognise the real value this funding has provided to the Ilkley area community.

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