How rugby charity raised over £200,000 for cancer patients
Rugby Against Cancer has raised in excess of £200,000 through various fundraising drives and even has its own holiday home for those diagnosed with cancer.
The charity held its first event in 2018 when Aaron Beesley came up with the idea of playing a charity game to support an old school friend who had been diagnosed with cancer.
What started as a one-off, nice thing to do for a friend has since snowballed into something considerably bigger, but the signs were there from the start.
“The idea was to have a fun fixture, raise a few quid and then that’ll be it,” said Beesley. “We were expecting about 100 people to turn up, but we had 700 people turn up and ended up raising just under £8,000.
“We donated pretty much every penny to cancer organisations in and around Hampshire and it just kind of spiraled from there. After that event one of our teammates at Portsmouth Rugby Club had to raise quite a substantial amount of money for immunotherapy, so we did another fixture to support him with fundraising.”
Two years later Rugby Against Cancer became a registered charity and has continued to raise money by completing different challenges or coming up with new initiatives.
For Beesley, the motivation came from a number of close friends and family being diagnosed with cancer.
He explained: “I set it up because I heard an old friend was diagnosed with testicular cancer. My wife’s grandad, my auntie and three people from our rugby club were diagnosed. My best man was also diagnosed, so it’s hit very close friendship circles.
“It’s everywhere isn’t it, pretty much everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer, whether directly or indirectly.
“One of our trustees is living with cancer, another lost his mum to cancer and his wife had cancer, another trustee has had cancer. There is a real reason behind why they are involved and a real personal touch.”
Over the years, Beesley, the committee and the trustees have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds by walking to Allianz Stadium from Portsmouth (multiple times), playing charity games or selling rugby socks to name but a few fundraising efforts.
In fact, the socks carry the double benefit of raising money, but also raising awareness when worn. Last month, Rosslyn Park and Sale FC both wore the socks in their National 1 fixture, as did Nottingham in their Premiership Rugby Cup game against Northampton Saints.
Rosslyn Park also hosted another charity game the Friday before England’s Calcutta Cup game against Scotland, taking on a team of representatives from Rugby Against Cancer.
While some cancer charities focus on research or treatment, Rugby Against Cancer takes a more case-by-case approach.
Sometimes they donate to marathon attempts by those involved in the charity, sometimes they buy things to support patients and families, or even buying a holiday home to offer respite trips to those affected by cancer.
The holiday home, known as the RAC shack, aims to make a terrible situation that little bit nicer for people, and so far the feedback has been very positive.
However, one of the difficulties the charity has faced is encouraging people to get in touch.
“The feedback we get is phenomenal, but I think people are quite private about their journey and are sometimes to proud to asked for help. It’s such a taboo subject, which we want people to realize it isn’t and to ask for help” said Beesley.
“We have so many resources we can use but we just need people to come forward.”
With over £200,000 raised in the space of seven years, the charity have already done an impressive job in supporting cancer patients, but there is always more that they want to do and rugby is at the heart of it.
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