Wigan St. Judes will be opening their Sport England funded Assault Course this coming weekend.

It will be opened by Honorary Alderman, Brian Baldwin C.B.E and Steve McCormack – Head of Player Welfare at Wigan Warriors, at 12.45pm on Sunday May 27th 2018.

The Assault Course is   believed to be a ‘unique project’ and St. Judes are the first community club of all sporting codes to have this facility which has been supported superbly by the Sport England Community Asset Fund.

Sport England launched thisFund early in 2017 and were looking for ideas that were dedicated to enhancing the otherwise unused spaces in the Community, to entice people to become more active.

The fund aims to help local organisations to create good customer experiences with financially sustainable facilities that will benefit their community for years to come, this can also mean providing help to get things up and running too.

Whilst Sport England continue to invest in projects that help people get into sport and therefore increase the number of regular participants, they are also looking to invest in projects that look beyond this. Projects that can demonstrate how sport and physical activity can – and does – change lives, and then becomes a force for social good.

Sport England wanted organisations to develop disused spaces. The committee at Wigan St Judes had a disused space between the gymnasium and the 3G pitch which was in extremely high demand. Not only did their own players from their 22 teams and 300 members utilise that facility, but it was used by other local sporting organisations too.

To ease the pressure of use on the gymnasium, St. Judes decided to apply for funding from Sport England’s Community Asset Fund to build an enclosed assault course between the gymnasium and the 3G pitch. This would help improve fitness, be used for team building and provide a different way of training for as many people who wanted to take on the particular challenges posed by the course.

With the assistance of the Rugby Football League and club committee members Joe Fitzsimmons and John Corfield, the bid proved successful and Sport England agreed to contribute £36,500 towards the total project cost £46,500, with St Judes contributing the balance.

The project needed a great amount of careful planning and this was led by the St. Judes Committee and well-known Health Champion Chris Fairclough, as they designed the course and agreed the apparatus required.

The course has 11 different pieces of apparatus including crawl nets, log stacks, chin up bars, a net climb, a bespoke half beam lift and parallel bars amongst other apparatus. It is fully enclosed and meets all safety requirements. It will be supervised by fully qualified coaches, and all local organisations will be able to book course sessions. The course will be maintained by the club volunteers and has a sustainability life plan to cater for maintenance, repair and upgrade, for many years to come.

Club Secretary Joe Fitzsimmons said ‘This project is unique but will be for the benefit of the Community and St. Judes thanks Sport England for their contribution. It is greatly appreciated by all our members and benefit and increase the number of people engaging in physical activity’.

Sport England’s Director of Property Charles Johnston said: “The Community Asset fund is dedicated to enhancing the spaces in local communities to give people more opportunities to be active.

“We’re proud to have helped Wigan St. Judes take a previously disused space and turn it into a fun Assault Course that can be used by the whole community with the help of fully-trained coaches.”

The clubhouse will be open from 11.30 am onwards and invite anyone who wishes to attend this special occasion.

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