THIS Saturday our Club will play host to a charity rugby match for a cause close to the hearts of many of our members.
Earlier this year, George ‘Dane’ White and his wife Leonie went through a highly traumatic experience.
On January 14, Leonie gave birth to their still born son, Oscar at Queens Hospital, Burton-on-Trent. We cannot begin to understand what they have and are still going through, but everyone at the Club sends their love and deepest heartfelt condolences.
George has written on the Facebook event for this Saturday that Oscar “was and always will be a huge part of both our lives and we want to cherish his memory”.
They are doing that in the form of this weekend’s charity rugby match, with an Oscys Legends team taking on a Wildboys side on Pitch 2 at Kingsey Road (3pm kick-off).
Money will be raised for the Snowdrop Suite at Queens Hospital where Oscar was born, with all proceeds going towards the facility being updated.
Dane explains: “This suite is designed for people who are in a similar situation to what Leonie and I were in.
“Without their around the clock support and overwhelming love and care, the experience would’ve been a completely different kettle of fish and even more unpleasant than it already was, so for that we’re eternally grateful.
“Without a doubt, if we did not have that suite I don't know what we would have done and the bereavement councillors were phenomenal, nothing was too much for them.
“We just want to raise a bit of money for them. It's not supposed to be a hotel, but we would like to help and support them with updating the facility and making things a little more pleasant for families.”
Incredibly, more than £1,900 has already been raised via their GoFundMe page, while they are expecting around 300 people to attend the match on Saturday.
Dane was born in Thame and played for Chinnor from U10s through to seniors, running out for our Wildboys and, on occasions, our Falcons.
Saturday’s teams will be a mixture of Dane’s ex-teammates as well as our current players, and we will be announcing the squads on our social media channels tomorrow.
“Everyone is just happy to play no matter the team,” he said. “We’re all just really looking forward to the game and raising as much money as possible.”
There is more than just the match, with James Ludgate bringing his American-style smokehouse BBQ, and he will be cooking up lamb shoulder burgers and pulled pork burgers from 4:30pm. There will also be an ice cream van and some classic games for the little ones.
At 7:30pm there will be an auction/raffle with fantastic prizes on offer, including tickets to England v Germany at Wembley in September. The evening then continues with our local resident DJ, Thad Cooper on the decks.
We hope everyone has a great day and we do urge you to come along and support if you can.