Aussie wine deal brings cheer to Kendal (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Aussie wine deal brings cheer to Kendal

9:52am Friday 20th July 2007 in

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WINE flowing from western Australia is to provide a major boost for Kendal Rugby Club's forthcoming campaign in North Division One, writes Dennis Aris.

Former Kendal centre Jon Collins, who emigrated to Australia and became a top businessman and leading light of Australian rugby, has brokered a deal to support his old club in return for promotion and sale of wine from the vineyard, of which he is a director.

The sponsorship, initially for a year but with an option for a further 12 months, is a breakthrough in club finances at a time when it is pushing to return to National League status.

Mr Collins, originally from Windermere, joined The Westmorland Gazette as a junior photographer in 1967, but soon left as he preferred playing rugby on a Saturday to taking photographs.

He played centre for Kendal for two years before taking a job in the USA where he played rugby in Philadelphia. Returning to the UK he joined Cumbria police in Carlisle and played for Carlisle and then again for Kendal in 1975 Moving to Stourbridge in 1976 he played for the club there until 1986 when he went Australia in 1987 to watch the first rugby world cup.

After playing for Randwick he moved into the upper echelons of rugby, organising and was eventually appointed to the board of the Australian Rugby Union as a director, serving for the three years that covered the World Cup.

Having spent some time as a trainee manager for SLD Pumps, Kendal, before emigrating he bought a pump business in Australia in 1997 and expanded it into world wide sales network the Sykes Group. With other partners he also established Barwick Estates in Western Australia, converting grazing land into a vineyard which now produces 60,000 cases a year.

He said he hoped his support for the club would encourage other local businesses to contribute and at a special barbecue last Thursday, the club said "thank you" to the 85 sponsors, who last year helped the club break even on its £35,000 running costs.

Impressed by the attractive running rugby which the side showed last season, many of those sponsors have already signed up again this year. Seven match sponsors have been agreed out of the 12 scheduled home games, with many others taking up programme and match-ball deals.

Although there is desire at the club to win promotion this year and return to National League Three, there is also a determination that survival there will not drive the club into a financial deficit as has happened in the past.

Club president Raymond Lee said the emphasis was to be on building a big squad rather than a team put together around players on costly contracts.

"Hiring some overseas players is a fact of life in modern rugby, even at regional level, but to buy at a cost of having a small squad led to problems when the first-choice players were inevitably hit by injury," said Mr Lee.

For the past four years Kendal had suffered from lack of depth in the squad, he said, but relegation to the North Division had not been all bad news because the crowds had quickly returned to enjoy the spectacle of a winning team during last year's first campaign in North Division One.

That said, Kendal will still have a nucleus of quality overseas players at the heart of the team. The most influential is likely to be centre Ian Voortman, who has been persuaded to return after a four-year spell with National League One side Sedgley Park.

Kiwi Hoani Moore, captain of Auckland's Premier club, Silverdale, is also a class capture and rated in New Zealand as a quality kicker and utility back.

Kendal had also hoped to woo Aussie Dan Loader away from National First Division side Waterloo, but the deal fell at the final hurdle when he realised work commitments and study at Liverpool University would make travelling to training and matches impractical.

Better news is that Nick Noodles' McKain, an ever-present force in the back row of the scrum and even as a stand-in centre, is back in training with the club - and two of his New Zealand pals have been joining him at training sessions.

In October Kendal will have a chance to assess their credentials for a return to the National Leagues as they have drawn National Division Three side Rugby Lions in the first round of the EDF Energy National Trophy at Mint Bridge on October 13.

Windermere have also been draw at home in the first round of the EDF Energy Senior Vase. They meet Barnard Castle from Durham and Northumberland Division Two on September 1.

dennis.aris@kendal.newsquest.co.uk n KENDAL landed a double at the Cumbria RFU annual awards presentation dinner.

Back-row forward Phil Whitfield was named Young Player of the Year and scrum-half James Gough was chosen as Player of the Year for his performances with the county.