Help a village girls rugby team

Hi, my name is Paul, and I am trying to raise some money for a local sports team. Winscombe RFC have been at the forefront of Girls rugby in the West Country and beyond for the past 8 years, slowly building to the point that we now have over 140 women and girls playing for us in the U12, U14, U16, U18 and now Women's brackets, so there's a clear pathway for girls to play high level competitive Rugby.

We've been the most consistently successful girls rugby club in the south west, if not the country: since we started we've won multiple regional finals in the RFU National cup, the cup itself 3 times, and the current Under 18's girls team have featured in the National Cup semifinals for the past 3 seasons. Last season, we won the Gloucester Leagues Cup in our Debut season and we host touring clubs and tour ourselves as much as we can.

Being a village team, we are not as well funded as the city based teams, and rely more on donations from the parents and known local businesses. However, due to the cost of living crisis, the parents have understandably not been able to give as much, and our playing and training equipment has started to become a bit ragged and old because of it.

With the season not starting properly until late August, what we're trying to raise finds for, is a new set of training tops and playing shorts and socks for 30 girls. We think the playing shirts have another season in them, but the others don't. We will also buy new tackle bags and other training equipment, as ours are now no more than pillows and present more of a problem being used nowadays. The dream is for a new scrum machine, as ours is more of a health and safety feature nowadays, but that's for another day!

Winscombe RFC's Girls Rugby has given many years of rugby to local girls, which they wouldn't have had without it; an outlet that didn't exist and has helped them on their paths to becoming great adult members of the local and not so local community; it has seen multiple girls represent the local clubs, like Bristol Bears, the not so local Loughborough, Lightening, Ealing Trailfinders, Wasps and even England and with a club motto of Friendship through Rugby seen them make friends wherever we've played in the country and abroad; it's helped build friendships and social connections that we hope last a lifetime.

We encourage and see lots of our girls playing representative rugby for the local counties and RFU Centres of excellence, and keeping the club going is helping generation after generation of girls play a sport they both love and enjoy.

Please do help us continue to be a beacon for girls sport in this rural area of Somerset; any amount you give, will be genuinely appreciated.

A breakdown of the costs:

We need 34 shirts at £25 each = £850.

We need 34 Shorts at £18 each = £612

We need 34 Socks at £8 each = £272

We need 4 tackle bags at £250 each = £1000

We need 10 new balls at £17 each = £170

Which comes ot just under the £3000 magic amount.

Anything helps, a pair of socks, a ball, anything.

Here's a link to some of our U16 and U18 games over the past couple of years:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDy1gzJMaKZ7MMDDRKXisK1OhYS2V7YwW&si=setcTgzkFCAV_wEn

Thanks

Paul