WHITE HART MARAUDERS LATEST NEWS

Riley Sports Photography: Riley Sports Photography is a professional photo agency based in Swansea South Wales. Formed by Ian Williams in 1995, they have over 15 years experience providing high quality images to newspapers, magazines, clubs and organisations. Specialising in Rugby, Rileysports are about to start their 4th season as official photographers to the Scarlets region and Llanelli RFC and also have long standing links with other Welsh Premiership Clubs” Riley Sports are swiftly becoming sevens specialists, having been involved in Sevens rugby, for many years at Cwmtawe and with Olorun and the Carmarthen Warriors. More recently as Official photographers for MR7's and Bath Sevens. Riley Sports Photography are delighted to be associated with the Marauders in. Marauders and other seven’s images can be found at www.rileysportsphoto.com

The UK National Sevens Series on Sky Sports: In case you haven’t heard the good news yet, the inaugural National Sevens Series will now be covered by Sky Sports. This is great news from UR7s, the organisers, as all of our sponsors, advertisers and supporters will benefit from this high profile coverage. See details here....

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Wild Boar Rugby 7's, Eversley 8th August 2010 Calling all you Surrey, Hants and Berks rugby players and supporters. On the 8th August 2010 the inaugural Wild Boar Sevens Tournament takes place in Eversley, the ancestral home of the White Hart Marauders who are supporting the Eversley Sports Association in launching the event. The ESA are putting on a great day out for sevens supporters on the rugby pitches, adjacent to Eversley Cricket Club, including an after tournament party at the Frog and Wicket. Details here...

The Final Announcement  on the inaugural UR7s National Sevens Series has now been made, and the White Hart Marauders are ready to make the series a success. For full details on the Power Rankings for the teams taking part please click on the following link http://ur7s.com/news/1040/national_sevens_series_power_rankings.

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Developing Your Game:- This month we have linked up with Sevens Rugby coaching website rugbysevensguru.com and would like to recommend that all of you players and coaches out there, who are looking to develop your playing abilities should check out the site’s content.

There are numerous coaching tips and articles on the easy to follow web pages from some of the great names in the sevens game and the site is run by Daniel Connolly who has played for the Marauders in the Cayman Islands and Henley tournaments.

You can read our overview on Sevens coaching here... and then link straight through to the rugbysevensguru website via the link on that page.

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SCI-Mentor is our latest sponsor for both the Marauders first team and the Marauders academy. We are delighted to welcome them as part of our program.

Sci-Mentor Nutrition has a range of products designed to provide the optimum nutrition for the modern rugby player, which are used by top clubs and players that appreciate the high quality and a 100% dope-free guarantee (including sufficient documentation to back up their products).

Visit their website to see nutrition products recommended for rugby players, and given that they work closely with so many clubs, they will bring you training advice and tips from some of the nutrition, fitness and sport science professionals that they work with.

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Come and support the White Hart Marauders in Manchester as part of the inaugural National 7’s Series. Tournament dates are 3rd and 4th July 2010.

We were Runners Up in 2009 so come and help us do one better in 2010! Tickets are available from £5 and up. You can download the full program poster as a PDF file here....

Please note:- You can secure a weekend ticket for £10 if you book before the 31st December! So HURRY...

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The White Hart Marauders Vets side have just returned from Sydney, Australia where they won the Silver medal in an exciting final which went down to the very last seconds of the game. A match report will be following shortly but in the meantime if you want to have a taste of the action just click here... to see our gallery and some slideshows of the boys on tour!

Congratulations to all of you Marauders supporters who completed the poll a few months ago for Rugby sevens to become an Olympic sport.

The decision was made today, 9th October, by the IOC Congress in Copenhagen with 81 votes in favour and eight against. IOC president Jacques Rogge told delegates: "Time will show your decision was very wise."

The White Hart Marauders, and other Clubs in the Sevens fraternity have been campaigning strongly for the sports inclusion for some time now, and we are positive that this will lead to even greater exposure to the world of Sevens Rugby, especially at a time when the sport is growing substantially in terms of skills, spectator interest, and revenue generation. Read full article here....

 The White Hart Marauders Vets are in action again travelling down to Australia to play in the “World Masters Games” which is for competitors over the age of 35. Open to people of all abilities and most ages over 35, the World Masters Games are the world's largest multi-sport event, attracting twice as many competitors than the Olympic Games.

A significant, fundamental difference between the World Masters Games and the Olympic Games is that they are open to people of all abilities rather than just elite athletes, with the emphasis on participation.

The tournament replicates the Olympics by covering a large range of sports, and indeed some of those sports will be played at Australia’s Olympic venues. The Vets, captained by Warren ‘Lofty’ Milne will be a hard team to beat, but it is difficult to tell the strength of the opposition in this tournament as the teams come from all over the world, with the only recognisable team being the British Army XXXV’s side.

We play the Leeton Phantoms in our first game on Sunday 11th October, with our second and third round pool matches on Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th October. There is then a rest day on Wednesday and the finals are played through Thursday to Saturday. So anyone who happens to be in Sydney this week should get themselves over to Eastwood Rugby Club, 146 Vimiera Avenue, Eastwood (about 19k outside of Sydney where the rugby tournament is being held.

Anyone wanting to see the full tournament schedule can download the pdf file. As a few of the lads in the team are of Camberley RFC extract, including Lofty and Paul Hancock we hear that Warren and Brian Divers are heading up from Melbourne to support them. Good luck Lofty and the lads! Bring back the trophy! Download schedule here....

The White Hart Marauders are pleased to announce that our very own Howard Graham has joined the Harlequins Coaching Team to further his coaching credentials.

This is a great move for Howard and we all wish him every success in the new venture.

For those of you who don’t know Howard’s rugby history, his playing career started at school, when he played league before being converted to the Union code at the age of 11. His professional career started in Australia where he played for Southern Suburbs in Sydney, NSW. When Howard returned to the UK he joined the 7th Parachute Regiment RHA, within the British Army, and had the pleasure of serving in many places across the world.

He soon developed a love for the fast and furious game of sevens and throughout his sevens career has captained both the British Army and also the White Hart Marauders at many enjoyable venues on the 7’s circuit such as Hong Kong, Singapore, KL and Dubai.

Howard has captained England 7s, played in the Army vs Navy game 13 times at Twickenham and also skippered the British Army Team in 2001 & 2004 when they won the Middlesex 7’s.

As the Marauders Coach and Captain he has been victorious at many tournaments round the world, and this year led us to the 2009 Middlesex Sevens tournament at Twickenham, where aptly we beat the current title holders Harlequins, his new employers, in the first round.

Howard’s coaching career took off after 19 years in the Army when he took on a coaching job at Coventry to further his experience.

Howard now takes 30 years of experience in both the 15’s and 7’s games into his role at Harlequins where his main roles will be coaching and identifying playing talent within existing club, school and development squads in order to help build Harlequins base of home grown talent.

What a great day out! Thanks to strong demand from the supporters section, we filled a coach for this occasion, and the overflow traveled by car and train.

The coach left the White Hart at 9 a.m. and the party included Peter Doyle, landlord of the White Hart, and Mark Edgell, landlord of the Frog & Wicket, and some of his rugby-mad customers, together Fred Smith, Keith Ray, the Hearn family, and many other Marauders supporters.

We arrived at Twickenham in good time to establish “home base” in the Lower East Stand, and prepared for the Marauders first game, to be played at 1040 against mighty Harlequins, the winners of this tournament in 2008, and tipped to do well again.

The game started on time, to a mighty roar from Marauders supporters, and the team was soon subjected to some sustained pressure from Harlequins, but defended well, and a ball slipped to Ifan Evans after the initial Craig Hill break resulted in him scoring the first try of the game. Fantastic, Marauders up 5-0!

Harlequins then scored and converted, and the game ebbed to and fro, with Marauders supporters giving our team plenty of encouragement. Alex Cuthbert scored a try under the posts, which Howard Graham converted. Then from a 5 metre penalty Ifan Evans dived over for a 2nd try.

Full time was fast approaching, and with the scores tied at 17-17, nerves were strung to breaking-point, when Paul Jarvis gathered up a loose ball to power over for the extra 5 points, then the whistle went, we had beaten Quins 22-17, so they went into the Plate competition.

There were of course huge cheers from the Marauders supporters, followed by ample time to replenish glasses before the next game.

Our quarter-final game was at 1420 against Saracens, another rated side, who got off to a brisk start and scored twice against the Marauders, early in the game. The match was fiercely contested, and following an eye injury to Craig Hill, the ball went to ground, but good back-up by Alex Cuthbert resulted in a try to Marauders.

Alex then followed this with a superb try, when he wrong-footed the opposition and Howard Graham took the conversion to add the extra 2 points. Saracens continued the pressure which resulted in scores, but Marauders came back late in the game when Kameli Vuadreu stepped his way through and went over for his try, leaving the score at 19-26.

At this point we were hopeful of having sufficient time to re-start the game, with the chance to score 7 points, and force extra time, but this was not to be, so Saracens went through to the semi-final, and our Twickenham campaign ended for 2009.

However, the good news is, there is a strong possibility we will be back in 2010.

In the afternoon, the sun shone on the East Stand, there were many supporters around the ground in fancy dress, and the general atmosphere was fantastic, so we enjoyed the party atmosphere and watched the remaining games, including seeing London Irish beat Saracens in the semi-final, then go on to beat Samurai in the final of the main competition. Sale beat Quins in the Plate competition.

Once the tournament was over, everyone returned to the White Hart, including the players, where there was a live band, massive BBQ and lots of fun till late into the evening. We look forward to doing it all over again in 2010!

The last two weeks have been very busy and productive for the Kukri Marauders on the road with 11/12 July seeing us compete at the inaugural Manchester 7s at Macclesfield Rugby Club.

For a first up tournament the organisers had put together an impressive line up for the International Invitational Tournament. All the usual suspects were there along with Sale Sharks and Le Blue from France and Benfica from Portugal.  Read the complete report here...

 In last years inaugural tournament Marauders just missed out in the final following a massive game against the Army which went into extra time with the Army stealing the all important Golden Try to take the spoils.

Although we had a few changes to the squad due to injury and Bunny Burenivalu returning to play for the British Army we were keen to build on last weekend performance. Kameli Vuadreu, Paul Jarvis, Ryan De La Harpe and Matt Williams joined the squad. Read the complete report here...    See the Slideshows from Newquay here...

As many of you are already aware, Colin Hillman died in July after a long battle with cancer.

Colin had a very distinguished rugby career playing for Barbarians, Swansea, South Wales Police, Bridgend Sport, Merthyr, Wales Sevens, Schools and Youth to name but a few.

Colin was part of rugby history when he played for the Wales Youth team which defeated South Africa Youth 30-25 at the Newlands ground, Cape Town on May 31, 1980, the only Welsh international win against a South African international team on South African soil.

Colin also played for and captained the White Hart Marauders both at home and abroad. In 1991 Colin was the captain of the first Winning Marauders "Dream Team" in the Amsterdam Heineken Sevens.

The last time Colin played for the Marauders was a few years ago at the Aberaeron 7’s when his son was playing for the Marauders and Colin turned up with his boots and got a game.

Colin had many friends at the Marauders and will be sadly missed by all.

Colin Hillman is survived by his wife, Janine and two sons Ben and Matthew.

Due to the cancellation of the tournament in Marbella this year we entered a squad into the Bournemouth 7s last weekend. This was only the second year of this tournament so it was uncharted territory for WHM.

With a number of our regulars unavailable through injury or domestic interference our stalwarts of Howard Graham, James Reilly and Adam Bishop were joined by James “Shorty” Short (sound familiar) for his second Marauders appearance and Justin James from Llanelli making his debut.  Read the complete report here...

The 38th Heineken Amsterdam Sevens ended much like the 37th, ( and the 36th, 35th and 34th come to that) with Samurai International ruling the roost in the Men's Sevens and the Ladies Sevens and Wooden Spoon winning the Veterans 10s.

However, in all three tournaments the outcome could have been very different with games being won by the narrowest of margins. Read the complete report here...

The White Hart Marauders need to clear up some confusion that has been fed back to us over the past two weeks.

In an effort to avoid any further confusion we are using the unique medium that is the Ultimate Rugby 7`s website http://ur7s.com along with our own website to spread some important information in order to protect the intellectual property that is the White Hart Marauders brand, our trademarked logo and most importantly our reputation and position as one of the longest standing and leading Invitational 7s clubs in the world!

We are aware that tournament organisers and players have been approached by a previous member of our organisation using the White Hart Marauders history and tradition to describe and promote his team.

Obviously there are a number of teams round the world using the word ‘Marauders’ in their title but we wish to make it clear to all that the only people with the authority to confirm commitments to tournament organisers, or players, on behalf of the White Hart Marauders are the elected committee. Any players who are unsure of who they have been contacted by should make sure that it is one of the White Hart Marauders committee members.  

To see the full statement please click here....           To contact us directly please click here....

The Kukri Marauders won the Senior Men's seven's tournaments on both days at Kinsale.

In the Saturday Cup they beat the Gilbert Stoned Pups 41:7 in the final, and in the Sunday Cup, beat the OB Shamrock Warriors (a selection from Munster and Leinster squads) 31:28 in the final. more....

The Marauders also won this tournament in 2008 and are well positioned to go to next tournament in Amsterdam with a significant win behind them. See the picture slideshow  here....

Andy Gomarsall revisited his friends in the White Hart Marauders at their annual Black Tie Dinner, in Eversley this month, to help them with the launch of their new season, and as the pictures show everyone had a great time in line with the Blues Brothers theme. more...

See the Blues Brothers ball picture slideshow here....

Join the White Hart Marauders club and become involved in one of the great rugby sevens traditions.

Both Annual and Life membership now available. To join, please download the membership application form here....

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