Welsh Rugby Union
  • yesterday
Transcript
00:00My name is Phil Jones, I'm the chairman of Pondlice Rugby Club.
00:10Currently we have age ranges from under sixes all the way through to youth.
00:14We've got two senior men's sides with seniors on the development team and we're currently
00:19hosting the West Swansea Hawks ladies team.
00:23So we have got about 400 players and volunteers registered with the club currently.
00:29Well I've nominated Gethin, there's a little bit of a story behind it, in that our team
00:34we had some reasonably good players in fact, quite good players for the league that we
00:38were in, Division 2 West, but we got pretty stagnant and we weren't really going anywhere.
00:43So we thought we'd change the coaching set-up and advertise for new coaches and Gethin threw
00:49his name in the hat.
00:51And he said, look Phil, I've got no previous coaching experience apart from the juniors,
00:55I'm interested to learn and I'd like to take on the role.
01:00It was really important for me that he wasn't from outside, he was from the club and understood
01:04what the club meant.
01:06So I asked him what he sought to achieve and Gethin told me, I promise you, he said, while
01:12I'm coaching I'll take you to Division 1 and I promise I'll keep you there for the season.
01:16So we took him on board and in that first season, he achieved his objective, we won
01:21every league game bar one, he achieved his WRU coaching status.
01:26We got to the final of the Silver Bowl, semi-final of the West Wales Bowl, so a really, really
01:31successful season and we had our first season in Division 1 this year, which was a bit tough
01:38for the boys, a bit of an eye-opener really at that step above.
01:40But the passion that Gethin showed to put him back into the grassroots club that he
01:45played for as a coach and for Nellyn, and the passion that way he put that across was
01:50really impactive and I think that's the reason that we chose him.
01:54And I think everybody puts an arm around Gethin and thanks him for his contribution from the
01:59junior coaches, to the senior coaches, to players, everybody in the club, he's a very,
02:04very, very valued member of our team.
02:08Diolch Gethin!