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Another game under the belt and by all accounts an enjoyable prize-giving held at Royal. Well done to Darren for introducing some new faces and a look into the future of Gauteng Nomads.

I have just returned from a 3 day stay in the Kruger National Park, which was brought about by a trip to Nelspruit to watch the Springboks play Wales. The Springboks (coached by that visionary, Heyneke Meyer and led by the youthful Victor Matfield, who in his autobiography, entitled “Victor – My Journey” makes reference to his matric year with a chap called Ken Blake), didn’t deliver a great performance, “maar n’ punt is n’ punt ou pal.”

After a successful Andrew Mentis Rugby Day held at Ellis Park last year, attended by many Nomads, including a Lowveld contingent, the Lowveld decided to do the same and extended an invitation to Gauteng. Ten of us made the trip to support their Andrew Mentis initiative and it was a massive success and well organised. Thanks to Gavin Bullen for all the hard work. As the Andrew Mentis Committee for 2014 we are again going to host the Ellis Park Rugby Day against New Zealand on 4 October 2014. As you may have heard at prize-giving, Ellis Park no longer allow group bookings directly through the stadium and this has been given to Computicket. The unfortunate reality at this stage is that they have increased the ticket prices from R350 to R650 or 46,15% (slightly above annual CPI and irrespective of where we are seated). We are obviously negotiating this price and will try our utmost to have it reduced. The result will however be an increase to our cost on the day and like all increases this will have to be passed on to the consumer. We will keep you informed of the progress of our negotiations, which one hopes is not as protracted as the platinum workers negotiations.

The Andrew Mentis fund raising is going well and we recently completed our first initiative. The beneficiary of the initiative was Woman and Men against Child Abuse (WMACA). It involved the acquisition and installation of shelving, which will be used for storage of case files in pending criminal proceedings against sexual offenders. Darren and I had the privilege of being there during the installation with Kevin Barbeau (Executive Director at WMACA). I would like to thank my client, Dietmar Krupke at Store-quip for providing the shelving at a discount and also for the free installation. My thanks also to Tania Otto of WMACA with whom I have dealt on their needs and providing me with insight into their charity and their fight against child abuse. For those of you that are interested you can visit their website on www.wmaca.org.za

Finally – the last two games have intentionally been raffle free, however, this is soon to change. We will be doing another TaylorMade draw, to be drawn at the Andrew Mentis Golf Day at Modderfontein on 5 September. Also, the diamond draw will be done at Xmas Cup at Randpark and tickets will be available from our October game.

Graham Bishop