Tackling ambition

Julie and I enjoyed our BRUFC VPs' lunch on Saturday and we were delighted to receive a cheque from them for £1000 for the Mayor's Charities. Buckingham Rugby Union Football Club is an inspiration for the town. Below is the speech I gave them after accepting the cheque from Club President Alan Leach

Esteemed President, glorious Vice Presidents, honoured Co-Chair and all wondrous supporters and friends of Buckingham Rugby Union Football Club, thank you for inviting me and my wife, the Mayoress to this Vice President’s lunch. Julie and I are most delighted to be here. 

Moreover, I am most grateful to receive your cheque for £1000 as your collective contribution to this year’s Mayor’s Charities. This is a stunning amount of money and will mean that each of the three charities will now receive a cheque well in excess of £1000 at the annual Mayor Making on May 4th. Thank you.

Sincerely, thank you.

I am now nearing the end of my year as Mayor of Buckingham. Although I should say that my fellow Town Councillors decided unanimously back in February that they would like me to serve a second year. And I will be honoured to do so.

Throughout this first year, I have been relentless in searching for all ways to help Buckingham become an even better place in which to live, work, study, visit and indeed, play. 

And it has been an amazing, fascinating and inspiring year for me and indeed for Julie. We have got to go to many new places and meet lots of passionate and committed people who are each in their own way, doing something powerful for our Buckingham community. And here we are today, finding out more about how BRUFC is providing fantastic sporting opportunities for hundreds people of all ages.

My connections with Rugby are limited to having a Dad who played for his home town of Burnham-on-Crouch long before I was born and a regular sofa slot supporting Wales in the six nations each year! (My mother is Welsh and I was born there! And of course, it is well established and known Wales has the fastest and most graceful rugby players in the world!)

But let me turn to why I think your club is so brilliant and why I am so glad you are part of our Town. 

When I became Mayor last May, I set ambition as the theme of my Mayoralty. And I have been pursuing this for the last few months. Ambition is a very important word to me. When I review all of what I have sought to do in my life: professionally, personally and politically, I have arrived at the conclusion that ambition lies at the heart of it all. I have always aimed to do all that I can to help create a world in which everyone has dreams and ambitions, and the wherewithal to achieve these.

Ambition is a very precious thing and I think we need more of it in our world. Ambition, hope and dreams are good for our health and well being, and they good for our society too as they drive our economy and improvements in community spirit. 

And so as your Mayor, I have been focusing on ambition: I have be looking for all ways in which I can support, nurture, recognise and rejoice in the ambition present in all those I have met and the places I have visited. 

And I see lots of ambition here! Through your excellent Rugby Union Football club, you help people shape and realise their ambitions. And not just on the Rugby pitch. I am firmly of the view that the skills and attitudes needed to be a great Rugby player and have a winning team are many of the same skills needed to lead ambitious, successful and healthy lives. So what are these skills?

Well, we all need to work on our fitness - some probably more than others! We all need to work in teams and understand give and take. We all need to respect and admire other people no matter who or what they are. We all need to delight in our own successes, and delight in the successes of others. And we all need to be able to pick ourselves up when we are down, and help others to do so too. We all need to know that we are complex thinking beings and why we succeed some days and not others is down to wide range of factors which are not always easily understood.

We all need to remember that almost everyone is engaged in battling more than one demon… and that the battles on the Rugby pitch are more limited than the battles that we fight in our heads. And through Rugby and sport in general, we learn that we can engage in raw and sometimes brutal contest and still shake hands at the end. 

One of the major things I have learnt this year, is a greater appreciation and understanding of how much sport adds to our community and the well being of our town. Thank you for bringing our growing town together: rugby does that so well.

So thank you for being part of all that. Thank you for being part of making Buckingham an even more ambitious town full of confident people. Just as the world needs more peace, kindness and prosperity for all, so it also needs the ambition and confidence to get us there. 

And whilst ambition is something for all ages of course, the three charities I chose are ones that support children and young people to lead ambitious and fulfilling lives. By your donation you will be helping our local Buckingham Youth Club, the NSPCC and UNICEF. Children and young people here in Buckingham, nationally and around the world will benefit greatly from your generosity. 

And I will end with paying tribute once more to all of you, to all of your families and indeed to everyone engaged with this glorious Rugby Union Football Club - thank you for helping to make Buckingham an even better place! 

May you win every league, every shield and every championship!