Date: Fri 22 Feb 2013

This half term saw London Irish down at New Milton & District RFC. The community coaches from the club ran a three day camp running from 9:30am-3:30pm.

Community coach Mike Crump said: “New Milton & District RFC has been a community club partner with London Irish for many years now. The set up for their youth and senior section is fantastic. There has been a few children who attended our camp join their youth section from this, which is great to hear. We run around 35 camps a year all around our club partner counties and it is always a pleasure to come to a friendly club with enthusiastic members and good facilities.”

Simon West, a New Milton youth coach, said: "It was a very impressive three days enjoyed by young players and prospective players from across the local area. London Irish provided very high quality coaching for children from the age of 6 to 16. All children have said how much they have learned and enjoyed their rugby immensely. London Irish also provided coaching education sessions for New Milton youth coaches ensuring that the improvements learned over the rugby camp are sustained for the longer term."

One of the London Irish community coaches Nigel Howe is a first XV coach at New Milton & District RFC. Nigel when asked about the camp said, "given the opportunity to empower young people to develop life skills, by solving rugby problems fills me with great pride. Learning through enjoyment and fun is very important for the development of our young people. The talent and rugby skills on show this week were very impressive. Thank you boys!”

All of us from London Irish enjoyed the camp and are already looking forward to the next one down here. The children gave us great feedback and hopefully learnt whilst having fun. These camps are a great way for children to develop their core skills as well as learning some new tricks of the trade. They receive over 12 hours of rugby in just three days, which is the equivalent to seven Sunday morning training sessions. They were certainly all exhausted by the end of the third day! It was so good to see all of them with a smile on their face as they have had fun, made new friends and developed as players.
Each child received free gifts, including tickets to watch a London Irish game of their choice at the Madjeski Stadium in Reading, so the children can watch the first team dispaying the same techniques they learned during the rugby camp week.