Get your name on the Cov shirt

COVENTRY supporters can put their shirts on a successful 2010-11 campaign for the Butts Park Arena club. Fans are being invited to sign up to have their names printed on the traditional blue and white hooped shirts which the team will wear next season. The club has a target of 200 names, each costing £100 for the season, with the money raised going towards funding their community programme

within local schools and clubs.

The scheme is the idea of Michael Mogan who, fundraising director of Perpetual Legacy, the group which helped Cov to come out of administration at the start of the year and secure a new lease to continue playing at Butts Park, is a former Coventry Cathedral employee.

“I had a wonderful time working at the Cathedral and one of the greatest successes was a glass screen on which people etched the names of loved ones and family members,” he said. “It meant the world to the people who did it.

“The idea of adding names to the team shirts is quite innovative and a great way to develop community spirit.”

The shirt appeal was unveiled by radio presenter Jon Gaunt at a press launch hosted by the club’s board of directors.

“Coventry RFC is part our collective history and tradition, a great cultural as well as sporting institution, and it is remarkable the way it has regenerated itself with the hard work put in over the past months,” said Gaunt.

“I think this is a brilliant initiative and a great way forward. The city should get behind the club and what the directors are doing, and we should work together to make this flourish.”

Said club president Peter Rossborough: “We are trying to forge a new model for Coventry RFC and rugby alone doesn’t allow the club to flourish and achieve.

“Coventry has always been different to other clubs you find in the country, it has always been a community rather than a club, rooted in the people of the city, and that is the feeling we are hoping to regenerate.”

Players representative Lee Parry outlined what the project means to the squad.

“If supporters are putting their names on the shirt it will mean so much more to the players to wear it,” said the Coventry-born winger. “As a proud local lad, I am playing for Cov and the shirt, and it will be great to see that it means as much to the fans.”

The appeal has already passed the 40 mark, and anyone wanting to subscribe or find out more about the project should visit the club website, visit the ground on weekdays or call 024 7623 1001 to make a postal request.