On Thursday 8th February - the Fullerians Touch team were invited to attend a tournament at HMP The Mount in Bovingdon. The tournament was part of the Saracens Initiative Get Onside - which offers a selected 20 inmates participation on an 8-week course of practical rugby sessions and a classroom curriculum focusing on employability and life skills. On week 3 of the course the participants organise a touch tournament which saw visitors mainly from City firms and Saracens Foundation attend to be part of a 6-way mini tournament.

Fullerians Touch was the only actual touch team involved on the day and we took eleven players who took time out of their working day to head over to the Mount for the afternoon. The event itself was well run and the participants involved were incredibly engaging and confident. Many of them had never played rugby before but they chose the teams (6Nations sides!), ran the warm up, refereed the matches and networked and chatted after the match with all the visitors. Lucy Daviss from Fullerians said "It was a privilege to be involved, and hope we can be part of any future tournaments."

Mike Dobson, Senior Development Manager at Saracens Foundation contacted Neli after the event to say "I just wanted to say thanks again for coming along to the Touch Tournament at The Mount yesterday and for all the hard work you put in to getting so many others there from Fullerians, we really appreciate it! Please also pass on our thanks everyone else who attended from the club, I hope they enjoyed the day."

He also extended an offer to Fullerians to continue their involvement in the project by offering volunteer mentor support to a participant on the course during the remainder of their sentence and through the gate. Over the coming weeks we will look to involve someone from Fullers in this capacity.

A great afternoon was had by all and I can confirm we were all let out at the end of the day for good behaviour!