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THE END OF THE BEGINNING!<br />

by Lawrie Davies, Founder & Managing Director, Rhondda Netball<br />

The instant nature of today’s society can often make it extremely<br />

difficult for one to be truly reflective. We’re all eager<br />

to get whatever we want instantly, like right now! We<br />

might not realise it, but this often hinders our ability to<br />

be objectively reflective and we tend to judge progress in<br />

minutes, hours and days, rather than weeks, months and<br />

years. But in preparing to write this article I had the great<br />

opportunity to look back over Rhondda Netball’s incredible<br />

Year 1 and some of the amazing highlights from an<br />

unfinished Year 2, and I’m delighted to report that the progress<br />

has been quite amazing! But the really great<br />

news is, the best is still to come, because we’ve only<br />

reached the end of the beginning!!<br />

Looking back on my own involvement in<br />

netball over the years I’m really grateful for<br />

how Becky Davies and the female Marvels<br />

brought netball into the mix at Sporting<br />

Marvels, another charity I head up<br />

that's played a huge support role in getting<br />

Rhondda Netball established. I’d been of the<br />

belief for some years that a charitable operation<br />

focused around netball and female sports provision<br />

had big potential in Rhondda, especially<br />

so given the almost non-existent opportunities<br />

for girls and women when compared to those<br />

available to boys and men. But I hadn’t contemplated<br />

establishing and driving<br />

something like Rhondda Netball<br />

myself until the decision was made<br />

in Sporting Marvels to cut all of<br />

its netball activities. As the MD,<br />

such a decision was all set to<br />

make Sporting Marvels and<br />

me in particular, very unpopular<br />

with the girls and women<br />

that were involved. It wasn’t something<br />

we wanted to see happen so instead, we<br />

decided to have a crack at building what we<br />

believed was possible. As I said in my main<br />

editorial on page 9, if you want to go anywhere,<br />

you’ve got to start somewhere!!<br />

Days were spent with my Dad in what<br />

can only be described as a refresher<br />

crash-course of his entire history<br />

building successful community/<br />

sports initiatives out of the professional<br />

rugby clubs he worked<br />

for. Hours were spent with<br />

former Superleague player<br />

and Welsh International,<br />

31

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