This time last year, Sandwich’s SRMS rugby team completed a creative fundraiser that not only provided brilliant training through lockdown but also raised over £1,000 for Martha Trust; a local charity that provides lifelong care for people with profound physical and learning disabilities.
The challenge saw the Sir Roger Manwood’s School players impressively conquer the distance of 20,000 rugby pitches, which is equivalent to 2000km (1,242 miles), through cycling and running. CommunityAd caught up with former SRMS rugby team player George Winham who talked us through the incredible challenge, including the most challenging moments and just how proud the team are of their fundraising achievement.
Where did the idea first come from to start this brilliant fundraiser?
The idea came from us three boys, myself, Fin and Will during the 2019-2020 school rugby season. The country was slowly coming out of restrictions after the first COVID lockdown and we wanted to show people that despite the lockdown, we can still keep fit and we wanted to highlight the benefits of fitness as it can be good for mental health as well as physical health.
What made you choose Martha Trust as the charity to raise funds for?
We wanted to choose a local charity and support them through the pandemic. Will and his family are very involved in fundraising for the charity and I believe over last summer their events were cancelled with Martha Trust due to the pandemic. We all came to an agreement that it would be great to support such an amazing charity.
Martha Trust were amazing with supporting us as well. They helped us by posting social media posts about the challenge and further spreading the word helping us raise so much money. I would like to thank them for that. We were very impressed by the hard work the charity does and will continue to do.
How long did it take you all to cover the distance of 2,000km?
We completed 2,000km by day 4, which was amazing. In the end, we accumulated 2,977.82km over the 7 days.
What did you enjoy most about the fundraising challenge and what would you say were the most difficult parts of the challenge?
I think the most enjoyable part was getting the boys back together after a tough few months due to lockdowns. For a lot of us, it was the first time we had seen each other since the last day of school when they got shut down due to the pandemic.
Although, we had to keep it to small groups due to the restrictions in place at the time. We would often cross paths throughout the day which was always nice. The most challenging part was definitely the heat that week. I remember the whole week was so hot. This factoring in with the lack of fitness a lot of us had done during the lockdown mad the challenge tough but, it was also fun.
You raised an incredible £1,295, looking back at this how proud are you of what you achieved and how surprised were you at the incredible support you received?
Looking back now it is amazing to think we raised this much money. I am very proud of all the efforts the boys put in and especially as we came up with the idea the week before and it all happened so quickly.
We were definitely surprised at the incredible support we received. The school were amazing at spreading the word for us. Mr Hunter (Headmaster) gave us a shoutout on a few of the weekly videos he posted to the school giving news. Fin also had set up an Instagram for the 2019-2020 season, we already had a lot of followers on there and a lot of support at our matches and that support transferred to the challenge as the whole school seemed to get behind us.
Are you still involved in rugby today and what did you enjoy most about your time at SRMS?
I am currently at St Mary’s University Twickenham, studying Communications and Marketing, I also am part of the rugby team at my University.
Looking back at it now, it’s really hard to single out the one thing that I enjoyed because I Ioved every minute but if I had to choose the best times were, for me in sixth form, sport at the school. Whether that be playing cricket or rugby, they were both great fun.