Eastern Counties Rugby Union

and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who was involved.

Firstly a big thank you to David Dodds for his fantastic coordinating of our second Annual 4 week touch rugby tournament at IRFC on Wednesday evenings which finished in the first week of July.
We had 16 teams attend at each of the 4 sessions and with an average of 8 in each team, we had about 130 people playing rugby for each of the 4 weeks, a great achievement in the off season.
We had a balanced split between rugby players and local businesses which helped encourage the newcomers into the game, everyone pitched in and helped when team numbers were down or if we needed a ref for a game, great rugby spirit!
We again had great support from Harwich & Dovercourt RFC this year, with them entering 2 teams each week. In addition, a group of ladies from Aldeburgh are in the process of setting up a Women's team and wanted some experience of touch rugby and they also attended every week. We were able to welcome back some former players of the club who have now returned from university and are hopeful a number of these will now be staying in Ipswich and joining our senior squad for the 16/17 season.
We've hopefully picked up a few new Y&J players for next season, got some interested people for our 3rd team and made some connections with previous sponsors as well as helping raise the IRFC profile in the local community!
We have been able to generate some funds for the club through the Bar and a BBQ each night of the tournament which is always tricky in the off season and we will be able to re-use some of the equipment purchased and donated for senior training next season. Thank you to Eastern Counties for their generous donation to help us run this Touch Rugby tournament.
Lots are looking forward to the tournament again next year and we've had great feedback. There has been a suggestion also to run regular touch sessions on Wednesdays as people aren't ready to stop yet! A definite sign of something successful!
We played 128 games of rugby, each lasting 12 minutes.... 1536 minutes of rugby or 25 hours!
Well done IRFC!