Leeds Rhinos Under 19s squad visited Ambassador Club Kippax Welfare ARLFC to help paint and decorate the club’s facilities in time for this year’s Dick Gibson Ambassador Festival this weekend, backing up from the fantastic work done by former Kippax and current Castleford Tigers Andy Lynch, Danny Orr and Grant Anderson on the RFL’s Give Back to Your Club initiative.
With the Dick Gibson Ambassador Festival sponsored by Charlie Brett's taking place this Sunday, the Leeds Rhinos Academy in the community programme visited their third Ambassador Club of the season at Kippax Welfare ARLFC, to help decorate the changing rooms, equipment sheds and entrance fencing at the club's multi purpose ground.
Kippax will play host to over a 1000 junior rugby league players across the city on Sunday for the festival organised and ran by the city's Ambassador Clubs with support from the Leeds Rhinos Foundation which provides a day long rugby festival for the under 7-11s age groups.
The voluntary work from the Academy players further prepared the venue for the festival on the back of the RFL's Give Back to Your Club initiative, which saw former Kippax players Andy Lynch, Danny Orr and Grant Anderson, along with their families and a number of volunteers clean up and improve Kippax ARLFC's clubhouse and the surrounding pitches earlier in August.
Leeds Rhinos Under 19s Assistant Coach Jonny Wainhouse commented:
"It lands nicely as this weekend as of Sunday Kippax Welfare will be hosting the Dick Gibson Ambassador Festival, where all the community clubs who are on the Ambassador Scheme come together and play in a Rugby tournament with all the financial benefits from the competition going back to the clubs.
"The guys are volunteers today and off their own backs have come to Kippax to benefit the volunteers programme that the club had down here last weekend, where a lot of volunteers came down to benefit the club, so this is the Leeds Rhinos Academy doing their bit as well."
The Leeds Rhinos Academy in the community programme is supported by the Leeds Rhinos Foundation and Key partner Mears, who help fund the equipment and paint to help the players work with the city's Ambassador Clubs.
Club Ambassador at Kippax Welfare, Elizabeth Torvil who helped organise the day alongside Andy Lynch and Leeds Rhinos Foundation Community Clubs Development Officer Sam Horner said:
"I'd like to say a big thank you to the players for attending yesterday and putting so much effort into making our club look amazing.
"Leeds Rhinos Foundation and the club does an amazing job for our grassroots clubs and I'm now really looking forward to our junior festival on Sunday."
For more information on the work of the Leeds Rhinos Foundation visit http://www.leedsrhinosfoundation.org/home.php?
To find out more about the RFL's 'Give Back to Your Club' project click here
See below for the full video of the day: