What We’re Doing

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Roger Wilkinson – Monty had the right idea

We were joined this evening by Coach Roger Wilkinson formerly a player with Plymouth Argyle and Luton Town, a coach with Crystal Palace, West Bromwich Albion and the New Zealand under 17 and 20 teams and director of coaching for the New Zealand Football Association.

Now living in Wolverhampton Roger explained how a shared coaching ethos with John Cartwright led the two of them to found Premier Skills – a local not for profit company with a worldwide reach – where he is now a Director of Coaching.

Roger and the team at Premier Skills are convinced that the current FA approach to the development of players and coaching staff simply does not work and through their development of their Practice Play system they have sought to replicate the conditions which made the street football of the 50’s and 60’s such a great incubator for British footballing talent.

Its not surprising that the team at Premier Skills take part of their inspiration from the great Liverpool sides of Shankly and Paisley but it was a little more of surprise to hear how important a role Field Marshall Montgomery has played in the development of their system.
Roger explained how Monty had understood the need to focus on the job at hand, the need to get the morale right within the team, the importance of knowing your enemy, of surrounding yourself with good people and of clearly communicating to all both the culture he expected of them and their objectives.
Premier Skills have translated this onto the football field by ensuring that everyone understands the game style which they are working towards, the importance of governing the ball, the need to go forward with purpose, to create clever chances and to maximise finishing opportunities. Training is focused on playing football rather than ball games.
Roger stressed the importance of not only winning but winning with style and the Club wishes him and the rest of the team at Premier Skills every success in bringing about their coaching revolution.
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GSE 2012 Canada – Jayne Lawrence

Rotary’s Group Study Exchange (GSE) program is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for business people and professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 who are in the early stages of their careers. The program provides travel grants for teams to exchange visits in paired areas of different countries. For four to six weeks, team members experience the host country’s culture and institutions, observe how their occupations are practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas.

October saw the visit of the visit GSE team from Rotary District 5550 which spans Northwestern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. As their visit to this country drew to an end Tettenhall had the great pleasure of hosting a Farewell Rally for the team.

As part of the GSE Exchange program a team of young professionals from within our own District 1210 are currently preparing for their own visit to Canada where members of the Canadian team and of the Clubs within District 5550 will give them a taste of how life is lived in Canada and an insight into how their occupations are practised.

The Tettenhall Club is proud to be the sponsoring Club of team member Jayne Lawrence, Head of Information at the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals Trust, who joined us at tonights meeting as part of her preparations for the visit. Jayne will make a wonderful ambassador for the Club and the City. We wish her well in her travels and look forward to hearing from her when she returns.

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41 Club Storm Liverpool

Round Table grew out of Rotary back in 1927 so its no surprise that Tablers make great Rotarians and we are lucky that many of the members of the Club were formerly members of the Tettenhall Round Table and a number of other local Round Table Clubs.

Originally, membership of Round Table was limited to men aged between of 18 – 40 years (now 18-45), so that following his 40th birthday, a member of Round Table would have to retire. He was then eligible to join a 41 Club, which is the pet name for The Association of Ex-Round Tablers’ Clubs.

The 41 Club gives ex Tablers an opportunity to continue the friendships they have made whilst in Round Table and encourages them to continue their active involvement in the Community as well as supporting their local Round Table club.

Many members of our own Club are also members of the Tettenhall 41 Club and one of their members came along tonight to let the rest of us know exactly what they got up to on their latest Lads Weekend Away in Liverpool as Gordon Nicklin shared with us a documentary that he had produced covering the annual Tettenhall 41 Club weekend away.

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Like Father Like Son

Its always a pleasure to welcome a new member into the Rotary family but tonight we also had the pleasure of welcoming the son of an existing member of the Club as our latest member.

Local property developer Peter Maddox has been a member of our Club for sixteen years now and his contribution to the Clubs activities during that time was recognised in 2006 by the award of a Paul Harris Fellowship.
Tonight his son Simon who also works in the family business, Peter Maddox & Associates, joined his father as a member of the Club. A former a member of Wolverhampton Round Table and already a regular supporter of the Clubs activities we know that Simon has it in his genes to make a great Rotarian and we look forward to sharing some great times with him and his family.
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Its World Rotary Day

Today is Rotary’s birthday – 107 years since the formation of our first Club in Chicago by Paul Harris.

To mark the event and to celebrate the progress which the 1.2 million members of Rotary are making in the battle to eradicate polio Rotary Clubs around the world will today light up landmark buildings with the simple message END POLIO NOW.

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District Governor elect talks rubbish

Oh what a night it was, when incoming District Governor Trevor Davies gave us a rubbish talk. And we are still talking about it now.

While we are all knew something about compost and composting, at the end of the evening we were experts in the making.

As Trevor revealed the secrets of a good heap, not too wet not too dry, covered from the rain, he stressed the need for variety, layers not just a morass of grass clippings, (keep leaves out of it), insert a layer of newspaper and just watch your rubbish transform itself into compost that would make John Innes envious. You could sense our members’ zeal as they were working out how their miserable efforts could be transformed with a dash of sawdust, an egg carton or two, grapefruit, but  chopped up into small, sic, pieces, tea bags and coffee grounds.

A compost heap is like life, variety is essential, said our man Trevor and who are we to gainsay the expert. And we all enjoyed every minute of it.

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Policing in the Sixities

Our speaker this evening, Alan Wright, was an accidental policeman. Looking for an alternative to his actuarial training he saw a Bobby patrolling outside of his office window and thought that that may give him the opportunity to escape.

After enrolling as a cadet with the Met in the 60’s he was taught how to march and and how to fight before being let loose on the streets of Soho and Mayfair after just one months mentoring.

As well as being a time of great social change Alan explained how the 60’s were a period of transition for policing in the capital as the force evolved from an institution which was still largely Victorian in its outlook and practises in response to the challenges posed by organised crime and the emergence of the illegal drugs trade.

Part of the team which brought the Krays to justice and of the Chinese Heroin Squad Alan saw his share of action and he was able to share memories with us which highlighted both the lighter and darker sides of policing during this period.

Alan later went on to lecture at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University. He is the author of ‘Policing: an introduction to concepts and practice’ and ‘Organised Crime’ and now lives in Wolverhampton.

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Molineux Collection

Sunday saw the Club at the Molineux stadium for our annual pre match collection. Wolverhampton Wanderers  Football Club and its fans have been incredibly supportive of Rotary over the 18 years that our collection has been running and this year was no different with over £2,000 raised for local good causes taking the total raised over the years to over £40,000.

This years collection will help Power Pleas, a local charity which provides powered wheelchairs for young people in the Wolverhampton area to help them live a fuller life. Featured in the photo is Darren Langston with Wolves Vice-President Rachael Heyhoe-Flint. Darren was the first ever recipient of a Wolves wheelchair as a result of the collections back in 1995.

The collection will also help the ongoing work of Compton Hospice. It takes over £6 million every year for Compton Hospice to provide its services to patients free of charge.  With government funding only providing one third of this, the hospice relies heavily on fundraising to maintain its level and quality of care and the support of Wolves fans is greatly appreciated.

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Compton Hospice Rotary & Volunteer Suite

Back in July Jerry Hobbs, a long standing member of the Rotary Club of Wolverhampton and Vice Chair of the management board of Compton Hospice,  joined us to talk about the Hospice’s recent development and the £3.3 million investment which has now led to the introduction of 18 private suites for patients later in the year. These suites will have the facilities to ensure that patients can be treated with dignity during their time with the Hospice.



Following Jerry’s inspiration a number of Rotary Clubs in Wolverhampton came together to commit to raising an additional £60,000 over the current Rotary year to fund one of those suites which will be named the Rotary and volunteers suite. Our own Club committed to raising an additional £10,000 towards the cost of the Rotary Suite.

Thanks to the support of the people of Wolverhampton and South Staffordshire for the Club’s Auction of Promises and Big Band Night we’re pleased to have made good on our commitment and tonight President John was joined by Nick Owen to present Compton Hospice with cheque for £10,000.

Our commitment to Compton Hospice doesn’t stop here though. Thanks to the support of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club on the 12th February members of the Club will be collecting on behalf of the Hospice outside of the Molineux Stadium prior to the West Bromwich Albion match and a few months later on the 12th May we’ll be at South Staffs Golf Club for our Charity Golf Day again raising money for the Hospice.

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Malcolm Bason Award

2010 year saw the sad passing of the Club’s founding President Malcolm Bason following a long illness at the age of 80.

In recognition of Malcolm’s pivotal role in helping to establish the Club and to honour his service to the community during his many years of membership the members of the Club established the Malcolm Bason Award in his memory.

The award is to be presented annually by the Club’s Presidential team to recognise the contribution of a member Rotarian to the ongoing development of the Club. The inaugural award was made earlier this year to Club member Jim Murphy for the work which he had undertaken to develop the Clubs internet presence during the previous year.

As part of the award the receiving Rotarian is entitled to nominate a charity or project of their choice to receive a donation of £250 in Malcolm’s memory. Jim asked that the donation this year be given to the local Scout Association towards the cost of purchasing a new cook tent for use by the many Cubs and Scouts groups within the area whilst on camp and the balance of the £500 cost was made up by an additional donation from the Club which was this evening presented to local Scout leader Sara Lambert by President John and Nick Owen.

Scouting provides young people with adventurous activities and physical, intellectual, social and spiritual opportunities to help them to achieve their full potential in life. With over 400,000 members the Scouting movement is going from strength to strength but in order to build on its success it desperately needs more people to volunteer to help local groups and it has recently launched a flexible volunteering programme to make it easier for people to volunteer.