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Dorchester Rugby Football Club donated sixty pre-worn rugby shirts to Dorset-based charity Children of Fiji who ensured that they found a grateful second-home 10,000 miles away at the John Wesley Rugby Academy near Suva, Fijis capital, located on the main island of Viti Levu.

The players at the academy, which attracts 14-18 year olds from the islands of Fiji with the promise of top rugby coaching in exchange for voluntarily completing their secondary education, lost no time in donning the new shirts and getting down to some serious training in preparation for the following Saturdays match where the new strip got its first official outing.

Retired school teachers Peter & Margaret Long, who run the charity from their home in Cattistock, said that the boys were thrilled to be given the shirts.The Fijians are rugby-mad and even practice drop-kicking litter into the bin, but in such a poor country the John Wesley players had previously been turning out in strips consisting of non-matching t-shirts, making refereeing a game very difficult said Peter.

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A conversation in the Fox & Hounds Inn, Cattistock, with Dorchester RFC committee member Ben Sennett about how the club might be able to help impoverished youth rugby in Fiji led to the donation of the shirts. In exchange the Longs have given the club a Fiji 7-a-side international shirt, worn when Fiji beat Samoa to win the NZI 7s in Wellington, New Zealand in February this year which has been signed by the entire Fijian squad.

Peter & Margaret, who set up the charity in 2000 to advance education, health & welfare and to relieve the poverty of children in Fiji, have raised funds for projects as ambitious as the construction of a road bridge to enable children to reach school on the opposite side of a dangerous river, the provision of fresh water and sanitation to schools and even a boat to save the children having to swim to class. The Dorchester rugby shirts traveled to Fiji in a container as part of a one tonne consignment of medical supplies, kindergarten resources, children’s books and stationery that the Longs distributed on behalf of the charity on their last visit to the islands. Due to return to Fiji shortly, they look forward to seeing the green and white Dorchester shirts continuing their second life with the grateful rugby players of John Wesley Academy.

Below is a letter from Vice Principal, Isireli Mokunitulevu

On behalf of John Wesley College management,teachers and student I would like to thank you for the rugby jerseys donated by your club and handed to us by Peter and Margaret Long.Your support to the school has enable us to improve in the Fiji Secondary Schools rugby competition this year.
We fielded only two teams this year and they were the Under 16 and the under 18 division. Our under 16 team won the tier 2 competition and the under 18 lost to Ratu Kadavulevu school in the under 18 tier one quarter final competition. Also in the rugby league competition that was held in the first term our under 16 won their age group competition. Although John Wesley college is a very young school we have managed to be playing up there with the well established schools in the competition.

I do hope that these kind contribution from your club will continue in the years ahead.

Thank you and God bless
Isireli Mokunitulevu
Vice principal