Sponsorship sparks rugby growth at Young Park
● From small beginnings to 80 pupils and five coaches
The growth of rugby at Young Park Primary School in Gqeberha and the positive effect it has had on pupils highlight the importance of creating opportunities for children to participate in healthy sporting activities.
Thanks to a corporate sponsorship, initiated by Imperial Market Access Consumer vicepresident Bruce Denyer in 2022, the number of pupils participating in rugby has grown from 15 to 80 in six months.
In addition, after having started with two coaches, the school now has five.
Teacher and director of rugby at the school Ruben Pretorius, along with head coach Jacques Muller, acknowledged the huge difference the introduction of rugby had made at the school.
“Thanks to Imperial’s support, this sponsorship has had a significant influence on our community by investing in the children’s dreams of having a chance one day of becoming a Springbok and taking them away from negative influences,” Pretorius said.
“There has been a noticeable difference in discipline problems in class, as well as with any issues outside school due the impact of the sport”
Muller expressed his appreciation of Imperial’s investment in the lives of the young pupils.
“We are very grateful to Bruce Denyer and his company for creating this opportunity to grow the game of rugby at our school, as well as to contribute towards the healthy development of our children,” Muller said.
When setting out their fiveyear plan of introducing rugby last year, they tried to be realistic in their targets.
Instead, they have exceeded their expectations.
After having just enough players for one side at the start of the programme, they now have four teams.
“This year we were lucky enough to be affiliated with PE City rugby, so we can at least register one team to participate in the league this year, while we wait for the other jerseys to be ordered,” Pretorius said.
Muller added that more matches were in the pipeline.
“In this season, we will organise more friendlies for the remaining teams who haven’t been entered in the league, as well as enter our ‘bulletjies’ into a few tournaments to get more exposure for them in the game,” he said.
“After losing our one friendly match against Diaz Primary last year in a close finish [10-5], this year we had a really good game against Lorraine, losing 10-0.
“That was followed last week by a 10-5 win over Sunridge by the Under 9 team, which was very exciting for us all.”
Underlining the players’ progress, Young Park’s U9 team, under the guidance of coach Duncan Diedericks, registered a 24-0 win over Herbert Hurd last week.
The sponsorship has enabled them to buy the school’s first ever rugby jerseys, as well as rugby balls, cones, a ball bag and coaches’ jerseys.
“To assist the boys in learning how to play rugby by exposing them to the fundamentals of the game, we decided to also buy 10 sets of tag rugby kits, with the possibility at a later stage of hosting a tag rugby tournament for primary schools in the city,” Muller said.