Andrew Buckham of Irwin Mitchell Solicitors and President of Barnsley Rockley RC, Graham Noble, pictured at the Barnsley Metrodome host venue for the 2012 Disability Games.
The Rotary Disability Games will be hosted by Barnsley’s Rockley Rotary Club for the next two years. Originally founded in Mexborough in 1991, next year they will take place at the Metrodome and Riley’s Snooker Club next April.
The games are open to anybody who has a recognised disability and sporting events included are swimming, snooker, archery, boules, curling, rifle shooting, weightlifting and various racing events. Barnsley will have its own team amongst the 400 competitors.
The games will be backed by major law firm Irwin Mitchell Solicitors. Andrew Buckham an Associate with Irwin Mitchell who specialises in Armed Forces claims said, “our roots are very much at a community level. We are delighted that the Disability Games are to be held in Barnsley and are very excited about being involved, not just as sponsors, but as partners. We will be involved at all stages and will have our staff team helping out on the day.”
It will be a key event in Barnsley’s disability sporting calendar next year and follows Barnsley’s paralympian table tennis play Susan Gilroy MBE competing at London 2012.
I’ll be looking forward to hopefully covering the events, as I did the Paralympics. In June this year, myself and nine other writers were granted digital media bursaries by the Newham Barnsley Partnership to blog the Olympics and Paralympics in a way to help create a lasting legacy of London2012 in Barnsley. Unfortunately, the man responsable for heading the project abandoned it leaving all of the work produced unused and the www.barnsley2012.co.uk untouched since May. The ten bloggers were incredibly disappointed, not only at their work not being seen by an audience but at the thought of a wasted opportunity for community engagement and dialogue about important events like the Paralympics and highlighting the important issues surrounding disability. I have the feeling that The Rotary Disability Games will amend that.
Expect lots of coverage here at www.alternativebarnsley.com.
For more information contact Graham Noble, President of Barnsley Rockley Rotary Club e-mail graham-noble@btconnect.com
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