Behind the scenes with West Wales Raiders Manager Peter Tiffin

Last week I mentioned that myself, Jon Ellis, Wayne Ponting and 5 young welsh rugby league players were visiting the City of Hull Academy with the intention of impressing the Hull KR and Hull FC super league coaching staff. The 3 days spent away at the City of Hull Academy was an amazing experience that will stay with us for a very long time with every minute spent there, learning something to take on board, the 5 players totally agreed and the boys took part in training with the City Of Hull Academy squad in their usual day to day sessions. All the players who are part of the City of Hull’s Academy train 5 days a week, this is something totally out of the ordinary for the 5 welsh players as the maximum they would train would be up to 3 times a week. The facilities were also second to none, with the boys using the full access that they had available to them, from strength and conditioning sessions at a fully equipped gym to a contact session on the Hull KR home ground. On the final day myself, Jon and Wayne sat down with the City Of Hull Academy staff and recapped what we all thought on the previous days experiences, it was a positive response from both sides where we are all looking forward to strengthening the links between everyone.

After a few days away in Hull it was time to travel to Nottingham to meet up with the squad and the rest of the staff to prepare for our first game of the season against last year’s champions Nottingham Outlaws.  We knew this was going to be a difficult game as Nottingham are always strong at home plus we had over 10 first team players missing due to injuries or work commitments. The final score was Nottingham Outlaws 42 – 14 West Wales Raiders, as stated in the home team’s report the score line didn’t reflect the game as both teams battled away at each other but in the end the champions had more strength in depth to take the victory. It was great to see 4 new players and 2 under 16 Raiders involved last Saturday, we now prepare for a local derby this weekend which will be away at Valley Cougars ground.

Once we were back at base in Stebonheath Park it was time to continue with a few matters that we had been working on previously, first was a big topic for the future of the development for the Raiders. This topic has now finally been released and we are really happy to announce that the West Wales Raiders and the Rugby League community in Greece have agreed future links, we can now confirm that the club has developed a new partnership and will be working closely with the rugby league community in Greece, formal links between sports team are a great way to develop players and encourage others into the sport, it also helps create a pathway towards competitive and elite sport. Over the past 2 seasons the West Wales Raiders Rugby league have been working on these pathways from schools all the way to super league, helping not only young players but also seniors, with the current partnerships with Swansea university and Cardiff city rugby league the club have now gone one step further and for the past couple of months the Raiders have been speaking with the rugby league community in Greece which have now established a pathway not only for players but for coaches. After numerous discussions, the Raiders will see players and coaches from the club travel to Greece a couple of times a year to help develop the game and it will also see players from the rugby league community in Greece travel to the UK to train and play with the Raiders. This will give players experience and exposure to the game in the UK and hopefully give them the skills and knowledge to take back to their team in Greece.

We will now look at how to continue to work and begin the development process with further discussions with the relevant people within the rugby league community in Greece; it’s an exciting time at the club as at the end of the week we will also be releasing this season’s fixtures for our junior section.