Commission: Meeting with Bruce Grindlay

On Wednesday 11th Alex and myself traveled to Sutton Valence School to discuss the possibilities of filming their Rugby squads train or possibly play an actual fixture against another school.

Sutton Valence School is a private school in the village of Sutton Valence. As an old pupil I know the reputation of the school as a successful sporting school which plays to a high level in many different sports such as Rugby, Hockey, Cricket, Athletics, Netball and many more.

We met the Headmaster Mr Bruce Grindlay to discuss that we are making a documentary about Concussion in Youth Rugby. We asked is their were any situations in which recently any student were concussed and gave us a few leads to go on, two male students with both a similar story. The first student was called Hugo and he had been concussed in a game but did not want to let his teammates and side down so he didn't tell anyone that he was concussed, resulting in him getting behind in work and his teachers eventually realizing the issue causing him to have to take time out of school entirely. Another student was Sam who was knocked unconscious in the first  mins of a game and to this day does not recollect the events that took place that game and has also agreed to have a filmed interview with us.

Also Mr Grindlay mentioned an u16 Kent Rugby 7s tournament next week and suggested that we speak to the Director of Rugby at the school, Mr Mark Howell. He was able to give me his email and I have discussed the situation of the documentary to which Mark was incredibly helpful. He gave us the go ahead to get some live footage of the tournament for our coverage providing we inform the schools present that there will be a film crew present and a form of consent. He provided us with a Pitch layout, timetable and list of schools present so we know exactly whats going on on the day and who to speak too.

I would like to thank the staff at Sutton Valence school for their help so far in making this process run as smooth as possible.