The parents and boys have been very busy with all sorts of activities, including raffles, car washes, senior player’s boot cleaning, shopping bag packing courtesy of Tesco’s in Taplow and Sainsbury’s in Slough, quiz nights, a sponsored park run and a sponsored bike ride/row/run of 354 miles, the distance from Phoenix RFC’s clubhouse to Nijmegen Wasps’ clubhouse. Nijmegen Wasps being our main hosts. The boys will be playing three matches on their tour, one against Nijmegen Wasps, one against Betuwe RFC and one under floodlights against Arnhem RFC, which will be a new and exciting experience for all of them.

Today, Mr Viv Nicholas, a very active and passionate member of the Taplow and Burnham communities and Chairman of the Burnham Foundation, confirmed that the foundation would be supporting the tour with a donation. This will go a long way to equipping the team with essential kit for the tour.

Mr Nicholas stated “The Burnham Foundation (TBF) seeks to assist local projects and groups both supportively and financially. TBF has now made grants to local organisations to a value in excess of £5K seeking to promote sport and the arts, and supporting the young, and not so young, within our community. We wish the boys every success on their tour and look forward to hearing all about it on their return”

Phoenix RFC U16’s coach Les Philpott commented “The players are so excited about the prospect of the tour and are extremely grateful to the Burnham Foundation for this very generous gift. We still have a way to go to meet our final target and anyone able to support us can do so via our GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/u16s-tour-to-nijmegen-2019. All amounts will be gratefully received and will help some of the less privileged children experience what could be the trip of a lifetime.”