Over the last two weekends of February, you may have seen many of the Swifts young stars out and about as they completed their 11-mile leg of our Woodhouse to Wembley fundraising walk.

We set ourselves fairly modest targets for the funds we hoped to raise, but thanks to the overwhelming generosity of the local community and our army of supporters, the club raised a whopping £4,155!!

As we announced in our previous news story, we have chosen to support the Doctors and Nurses from the Covid Ward at Kings Mill by creating a number of beautiful care packages containing all kinds of goodies as a token of our appreciation for all of their fabulous work as part of the wider NHS team who have - and continue to - keep us safe during these difficult times.

However, because of the amazing total that we managed to raise the club have also set aside a further £1000 to support local charities which we have identified that we would like to support.

£250 has now been donated to the Motor Neurone Disease Association. One of our players has a family member who suffers from MND and the club feel it is a fitting tribute to make part of our donation to the MND Association.

£250 has been donated to the Nottinghamshire & Lincolnshire Air Ambulance. The air ambulance service is one we all hope we will never need the use of, but will always be so fortunate to have should the need ever arise.

£250 has been donated to Rainbows Hospice for Children & Young People. Anyone who has ever looked up the fabulous work that this charity does to support young children and their families will know just want an important charity this is.

Finally, the most local charity we have supported is right on our doorstep. In these difficult times the support of food banks up and down the country has been a huge support to many families. Therefore our final £250 donation has gone to the Community Food Bank at St John’s for Annesley & Kirkby Woodhouse.

Our club has of course also benefitted from our fundraising event and the funds raised will enable us to provide new kit and equipment to our three teams ahead of the 2021/22 season.

We are incredibly proud of what has been achieved with our fundraising efforts over the past 6-weeks. We’ve provided a focus and an enjoyment for the children of the club to get involved with whilst still in lockdown. We’ve created a togetherness and club spirit better than ever before and now we’ve also been able to make donations to some very worthy charities who we are delighted to be able to help with our contribution.

Our donations have now been made to the four respective charities and when lockdown restrictions end, we hope to be able to visit each of them to lend our support and say thank you in person for the great work they each do.

We’ll have more news to follow up on that in due course as well as news of the delivery of our care packages to the doctors and nurses of Kings Mill in the coming days.

All of this has been possible thanks to the fabulous support of the local community, we thank you all.

Up the Swifts!!