Chair’s End of Year Message 2024

England Touch Chair, Tim Loveridge, reviews the biggest year in the Association’s history.

For all of us involved in England Touch, at whatever level, 2024 will go down as one of the best years in our history.

I say ‘one of’ because I believe that there are many more fantastic years to come, but for the time being we can all safely say how proud we are of what we have all achieved over the last 12 months.

Hosting the largest ever Touch World Cup in the way that we did - multiple sites, 20-plus fields, 189 teams, 4,000 participants, an estimated attendance of more than 10,000 on finals day - was tremendous. To witness it in person and hear all of the positive feedback from the Federation of International Touch and participating nations made me extremely proud to be Chair of England Touch.

The organisation of the World Cup was led by Chris Simon, who brought together an outstanding team of people who had honed their skills delivering European Championships and Atlantic Youth Touch Cups. They used all of that experience not just in the week of competition but in the weeks and months leading up to the event, and everyone involved deserves our thanks for not just the biggest, but the best World Cup in the sport’s history.

On the field we also experienced our most successful World Cup, winning 10 medals from 13 categories, more than we had won at all the previous World Cups combined. We exceeded our targets, had two teams play in our first ever finals, and our Opens teams won their first ever medals at a World Cup

This was the culmination of five years’ planning  by the High Performance Team. Ben Powell,  High Performance Director, Sammie Phillips - in one of her several roles with us as Head of Elite Coaching - along with Head Coach, Peter Bell, Head of Elite Logistics, Pippa Bourke, Head of Medical, Sports Science and Performance, Cari Thorpe, and the multitude of coaches, managers and staff, deserved all the praise which came their way.

We have a High Performance programme which is the envy of the world of Touch, and many domestic National Governing Bodies, too, and a substantial amount of hard work was put in over an extended period of time to put the structures and support in place for our athletes to perform at their very best.

The international campaign also included another successful European Youth Touch Championships (YTC), and our promising future is reflected in the number of players who played in both the World Cup and YTC.

Of course, all of the international successes were achieved in parallel with our core functions as a National Governing Body, namely to expand our domestic competitions, provide coaching and refereeing development courses, governing support to our regions and clubs, and grow the sport overall. Huge thanks to the England Touch workforce and Regional Leads for all your work to ensure that international events did not take place at the expense of our bread-and-butter operations.so much this year including making significant strides to strengthen the Association, notably in terms of the finances which had a massive hit during the Covid shutdowns. Future growth needs investment, which in turn needs solid foundations, and here we are in a good place.

I would personally like to take this opportunity to thank Chris Simon for his outstanding leadership and commitment to England Touch over the last five years. Chris leaves England Touch in a great place and we wish all the best for his new role at FIT.

Looking forward to 2025, we have a new Chief Executive, Vince Mayne, who is already building on Chris’s outstanding contributions. Our focus for 2025 needs to be on building on the success of the World Cup with a clear strategy to increase our income and to concentrate on growing the game across England, with the goal of increasing participation in our sport.

I would like to finish by thanking everyone in the Touch community for making this sport so special. Players, referees, coaches, volunteers, league organisers, teachers, parents, families, supporters - the list goes on. Together we are achieving special things, and I hope you have an enjoyable few days over the festive season and a fantastic 2025.

With best wishes,

Tim