{"id":91111,"date":"2015-06-11T13:23:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T12:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/?p=91111"},"modified":"2015-06-11T13:25:58","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T12:25:58","slug":"images-and-report-ballymena-bears-tour-to-telford-5th-to-7th-june-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/images-and-report-ballymena-bears-tour-to-telford-5th-to-7th-june-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Images and report Live >> Ballymena BEARS TOUR to TELFORD 5th TO 7th JUNE 2015!!!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEARS TOUR to TELFORD 5th TO 7th JUNE 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ballymena Bears set off on their first ever tour last Friday with a party of 31 including 13 players to take part in the Wooden Spoon International Special Needs Tag Rugby Festival at Telford Hornets Rugby Club, Shropshire. The Bears looked the part from the outset proudly wearing their new tour polo shirts kindly sponsored by M.Clarke and Sons Portglenone.<\/p>\n

(to use the gallery, click on an image it will open on its own page then click on it again for full screen.<\/p>\n

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\nThe event, which was organised by the disability rugby team at Shropshire Rebels and The Wooden Spoon charity, saw 30 teams from all four nations take part in an all day tag rugby tournament. As well as rugby played across three pitches, there were stalls, a mascot\u2019s race and duck race, all concluded with a fabulous meal and disco.
\nWith the sun shining over the renovated facilities at Telford\u2019s grounds, the Bears arrived after a fun filled trip the day before (which included a trip to the ships\u2019 bridge and a sit in the captains chair) and immediately established camp putting up their tour gazebo proudly flying BRFC flags and supported by the team mascot \u201cRory\u201d the Bear.<\/p>\n

During the course of the day former rugby International and Leicester Tigers player Tim Stimpson and England Rugby Women\u2019s Captain Tamara Taylor both dropped in on the Bears camp. The craic was mighty and each was presented a team beanie as a memento of their visit with everyone voting them Honorary Bears! \u00a0Tamara said of the festival: \u201cIt\u2019s an awesome event. Everyone I\u2019ve seen from the kids to adults and all the volunteers have had massive smiles on their faces, really enjoying the day.\u201d The rugby during the day was very competitive with both Bears teams having to adapt quickly to English laws but by the end of their afternoon matches everyone had ended up on the score sheet running in some superb tries along the way.<\/p>\n

The return trip on Sunday under a brilliant blue sky was broken up with a quick impromptu stop to take in Conwy Castle and some matching stunning local ice cream.\u00a0 Underway on the ferry, passengers and crew\u00a0were slightly bemused\u00a0to witness the \u201ctour court\u201d where Judge Rory Donald presiding, sentenced \u201cPie!\u201d (foam flan) on a number of the adults for alleged comic crimes much to the delight of all the players.\u00a0\u00a0On reaching home\u00a0a team huddle was called to conduct one last tour ritual, the singing of an Eaton Park favourite \u201cFluffy Sheep!\u201d. Great Fun from start to finish!<\/p>\n

The Bears would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who kindly donated to their tour fund from all those who sponsored the Bounce-a-thon, quiz participants, spectators at the Barbarians game, work colleagues, local groups and businesses and last but not least; family and friends.<\/p>\n

Touring players:\u00a0 Harry Cairns, Johnny Duncan, Margaret Hill, \u00a0Paul Kelly, Shane McCandless, Danny McCormick, Andrew McDowell , Bethany Meneary, Oisin O\u2019Neill, Troy Rodgers, Frank Stewart, David Wilson\u00a0and Freddie Vincent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEARS TOUR to TELFORD 5th TO 7th JUNE 2015 Ballymena Bears set off on their first ever tour last Friday with a party of 31 including 13 players to take part in the Wooden Spoon International Special Needs Tag Rugby Festival at Telford Hornets Rugby Club, Shropshire. The Bears looked the part from the outset […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[17197,7986,8826,4702,8265,5556],"class_list":["post-91111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ballymena","category-clubs","tag-ballymena","tag-bears","tag-images","tag-report","tag-telford","tag-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91121,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91111\/revisions\/91121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}