No Christmas break just yet for TMG!

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

We’ve had a week which began with a four o’clock in the morning start in Manchester supporting the Rugby Football League World Cup and ended getting back at home at eight o’clock on Monday evening eight days later after two days of fascinating coaching conferences at Wembley Stadium for The FA.  And in between, two days at Bolton’s Reebok Park.

The whistle stop tour of sport-related topics was fascinating.  The passion and enthusiasm with which grassroots coaches approach their voluntary activity was inspiring.  Working at Wembley is, for me, always an honour and the list of guests and the topics something I have a personal interest in.

I must confess to knowing less about grass.  But the Institute of Groundsmanship conference and awards ceremony at Bolton gave me some insights.  My biggest eye opener was from the head groundsman at the Green Bay Packers from the NFL.  On the pitch front they only have eight regular season games, a couple of pre-season friendlies and may be a game or two post-season if they are lucky.  Ok, so it snows a lot, but it makes looking after Wembley and it’s multi-use function from pop concerts to rugby union seem a doddle.

The club can never be taken over (like Chelsea or Manchester City say) because of the way the shares are owned by ordinary fans.  And the town of Green Bay itself only has 100,000 residents!

Back at the start of the week the RFL World Cup countdown got underway.  After next year’s Olympics, the World Cup in 2013 is something I’m looking forward to – with a tremendous tour of European venues staging matches.

Tags: events