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At Grasshoppers we are keen on improving things for members, volunteers, players… everyone. To help us do this it would be great if you could complete an on-line questionnaire. The questionnaire is anonymous and will only take 5 minutes to complete. The information will be analysed by the RFU and the results discussed with the club.

Please take the time to complete the questionnaire (link below) and please mention it to anyone else who has experienced Grasshoppers, even your teachers, ex-members etc. Your feedback is truly welcomed and important to us.

Grasshoppers are awarded Whole club Seal of approval

Grasshoppers RFC have confirmed their status as a flagship rugby club by becoming the first in the London & South East region, and the third in England, to receive the RFU's Whole Club Seal of Approval. The award recognises outstanding effort and achievements by volunteers in achieving high standards of developing and sustaining rugby union at their club. Grasshoppers have followed Windsor in Berkshire and Ilkley in Yorkshire in achieving the Whole Club award. It was introduced by the RFU in 2009 to build on the existing Mini & Youth Seal of Approval which recognised provision of youth rugby.

The new Whole Club accreditation demands evidence of good practice in areas including club management, player development and recruitment, child protection, sports equity, coaching and refereeing, as well as the recruitment and management of volunteers.

"Our volunteers are a real strength of the club," said Matt Gilmore, Grasshoppers' director of rugby. "As every sporting club around the country would acknowledge, the week to week tasks would never get done without quality volunteers and we are lucky to have plenty of them.

"Our approach has been to break down all the jobs into chunks which made them manageable. People with full-time jobs get involved by allocating a half-hour or two hours a week, or whatever suits them best. There is a logistics team which makes sure the kit is in the right place at the right time; one of the young players' mothers is the treasurer for the senior sides, and so on.

"The RFU's Whole Club Seal of Approval belongs to all those people, and we are not standing still as we have plans to recruit another 60 volunteers in the next few months."

The lesson of this good practice is that it encourages and sustains participation in sport, and Grasshoppers stand as a fine example. The club runs teams from Under-7s all the way up to U19 colts, as well as U15 and U18 girls' sides. They also run three senior sides and a veterans team, with hopes that a fourth senior side may play next season.

Phil Duffy, RFU rugby development officer for Middlesex, said: "Grasshoppers are very supportive of the RFU and extremely pro-active in the Middlesex community. The club has a huge mini and youth section, and to be able to link in with all the other sections and be a 'Whole Club' is a fantastic achievement. They have also lodged a bid for Sport England funding which aims to make Grasshoppers a community sports club with first class facilities."

Grasshoppers' Whole Club award follows on from their Mini & Youth Seal of Approval achieved in 2007, and a 2009 RFU President's XV award for Social Inclusion, when the club staged a league and festival for 44 primary schools and worked with 10 secondary schools and two special needs schools to deliver hundreds of hours of coaching, alongside the local borough's sports development team. Grasshoppers were also one of nine English rugby clubs to receive a Year of the Volunteer Award in 2005.

Andy Lees, the RFU's National Club Development Manager, said: "To earn the Whole Club Seal of Approval accreditation is a major achievement that underlines a club's commitment to excellence.

"The Whole Club Seal of Approval process is designed to encourage best practice in all aspects of running a rugby club, helping assess where they are and providing a template for them to move forward."

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