Donation from Louis Baylis Trust will help fund rugby coaching in primary schools

Maidenhead Rugby Club (RFC) is using a £1,500 grant from the Louis Baylis Charitable Trust to extend its primary school coaching scheme.

The donation will be added to a fund of £2,500 the Braywick Road club set aside for its ‘Maidenhead Rugby Club Coaching Initiative’ which was due to launch in May.

Although lockdown and the subsequent closure of schools has postponed the initiative, Maidenhead RFC chairman, Stephen Bough, is hoping it will be able to commence in the autumn term.

He said the club has always been involved with schools on an ‘ad hoc’ basis but wanted to do something more structured.

“We are a community club, and we’ve reached out to the schools in the past, but we just felt as a committee, and as a club, that we wanted to do a little bit more in supporting the local schools,” Stephen said.

“We actually wanted to put a proper schedule together, working with the schools, giving them exactly what they wanted, when they wanted, for the age groups they wanted.”

Stephen explained the scheme is aimed at primary schools rather than secondary schools because ‘in essence the primary schools need it more than the secondary schools’.

After speaking to the headteachers of several schools in the area the initiative will get off the ground with Oldfield Primary School in Bray Road and St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Cookham Road.

Both schools will benefit from two coaching sessions a week for ‘specific age groups that the school felt weren’t quite getting the amount of sport and PE that they wanted’.

The two coaches allocated to the scheme are Sammy Phillips, who is involved in England touch rugby and heads the Maidenhead Mohawks touch team, and first team player, and experienced Colts coach Duncan Jones.

Stephen said: “It was brilliant to get the Louis Baylis money because it just means we can do it a little bit more.”