Like many people of my age on this site (56!), I lost in quick succession some very dear family members.

As we all know, these losse are all incredibly hard, leave big holes in your life but I found my brothers premature death at 52 particularly challenging.

His name was Paul, very talented sports person, Oxford graduate, 4 times blue, father of four young girls and my best friend.

Paul had always wanted to support children getting into sport and used to support dis-advantaged children do exactly that when he was working in the City, at Morgan Stanley.

On the basis this was one of Paul’s wishes, a number of his friends from Kent decided to set-up a sports fund in his name, offering coaching into schools and helping children get into rugby and it is known as the Paul Keohane Sports Fund and has won awards with the RFU and their community rugby sponsors.

It’s been run in close conjunction with Thanet Wanderers rugby club and the fund is enabling coaching of 1000’s of children, helping with sports kit and even supplying Xmas hampers to dis-advantaged families, which was covered by ITV and the news media!

It’s more than just rugby coaching and a real community effort in Thanet, Kent, which is unfortunately, categorised as a deprived area in England.

Anyway, the point of my post is we have raised over £100k in 8 years via our annual charity day in Broadstairs, Kent (as below) but we are always in need of donations to pay for coaches, childrens training kit and pizza’s after coaching sessions etc!!!!!!

Therefore, any donation you can make is hugely appreciated and as many people on the site know, doing fundraising is very rewarding but I have also found that you have to be resourceful and work on the basis of “don’t ask, don’t get” thanks in advance! - John