Elsie's River

The 2006 Tour met and was greatly assisted by members of the South African Police Service. As a result the Tour was introduced to The Elsie's River Rugby Academy, a project set up by a local police Inspector Solly Geduld and his brother Evan.

Solly, an Inspector who works in the area of Gang intelligence, is a charismatic, larger than life character. He, as a young police officer, played rugby for Western Province and represented South Africa at 7s.

Solly and Evan, a teacher, both strongly believe that positive role models and life style choices available through sport can influence young persons and divert them away from the prevalent gang and drug culture in the area and a life of crime. The Sun Valley Rugby Project Ambassadors Tour agreed and wanted to help.

In May 2007 The Baldy Gang (Andy Rowsell, Simon ‘Clippie’ Davies, and Simon ‘Norm’ Green-Price) returned for a week to meet with representatives of the South African Police in Elsie’s River, the area of Cape Town featured on Ross Kemp's programme about gangs.

The Baldy Gang were there to help put in place a coach education programme for delivering Tag Rugby. They handed over 300 tag belts and numerous balls that were funded by Sun Valley Rugby Project’s Ambassadors Tour.

Linking in with the Elsie’s River Rugby Academy gave them the chance to coach, on several occasions, some of the most excitable, enthusiastic and physically hardened primary aged children you could imagine.

Norm said:

“We asked Solly to find us 50 local kids to have a small tournament with. 500 turned up! Solly just looked at us saying I could turn them away. We marked out tag pitches using old tyres that had been dumped on the municipal playing fields and with the help of the students from the University of the Western Cape we had Tag trained we turned chaos in to some sort of tournament! The kids kept complaining about the ‘tones’. I thought as they were all bare footed they were talking about stones, it wasn’t until Clippie got them to chase me and pull me to the ground like lions chasing a gazelle that I realised the pitch was covered in thorns! We didn’t notice because we all had trainers on.”