Welsh Sporting Lunch

On Thursday hubby and I got all dressed up and attended the Welsh Sporting Lunch, a charity lunch for Ty Hafan held in Cardiff City Stadium.

We’d seen it advertised on Twitter and  decided to go as it was reasonably priced and for a very good cause.  Our friend, Rhi, came with us too. We were seated on tables of 11 and each table had a Welsh Sporting Star sat at it.  I was a bit worried beforehand that I wouldn’t recognise any of the ‘stars’ there.

It started at 1:30, with free drinks on arrival.  Everybody was milling around, networking, as really it was a corporate event. We had a look at the auction items, then sat at our table.  Eventually everybody sat down at 2pm, I was starting to get really hungry and was hoping the food would arrive, but no they kept us waiting a bit longer.  The event was hosted by rugby union referee Nigel Owens and a journalist/reporter that I can’t remember the name of.

First of all they introduced all the sporting stars and they picked a table number out of a hat.  First up was Non Evans and she picked out our table number, she seemed very nice although I didn’t really get to speak to her.  Other stars who attended were rugby players Rhys Williams, Tom Shanklin, Barry Davies. Footballers David Marshall, Steve Jenkins. A Cardiff Devils player, a Glamorgan cricketer and a load of others that I can’t remember. Gary Speed didn’t turn up, even though he was meant to.

Then they started playing a game with True/False cards which they’d been selling earlier.  Pre-recorded questions asked by various sporty people came up on the video screens and you had to say if it was true or false, if you got it wrong you sat down, if right then you stayed standing.  Eventually they ran out of questions and still had about 15 people standing, so they quickly came up with some tiebreakers and managed to whittle them down.  I missed what the prize was in the end.

We eventually got fed at 3pm, really wish I’d eaten before going. We had sausage & mash & onion gravy followed by pannacotta. Which was all very nice.

After the food there was speeches by British Lions Brynmor Williams and Robert Jones, who were both quite amusing.  A lot of what they were on about went a bit over my head though.  Then Ty Hafan’s Director of Care, Jayne Saunders spoke about the work Ty Hafan do.  I’m afraid I had to leave the room in tears as hearing about a newborn baby dying because he was so poorly upset me greatly, although it was lovely to hear the way in which Ty Hafan helped the family and enabled them to be together in an homely environment when he died.

I managed to compose myself and went back in to the room in time for the auction.  Most of the items were sport related eg rounds of golf, tickets for the cricket, signed football.  Although they did have a pair of Take That tickets which I fancied, these went for £400 – a bit out of my price range.  Almost everything started at at least £100 and everything did go.  One of the items was a bit of a surprise as it hadn’t been on the table when we were looking. It was for four people to go to Cardiff City’s training ground to watch the team train and then have a Q&A session with Dave Jones (the manager), as soon as bidding started both hubby & Rhi stuck their hands in the air.  They continued to outbid each other a couple of times as neither realised the other was bidding, until I nudged hubby and stopped him.  Rhi got the winning bid.  Hubby’s going to go with her they just need to decided on the other two people to take.  Rhi has been told that they probably won’t be able to go until next season, in which case, will Dave Jones still be there?

There was also a raffle with some nice prizes but we didn’t win anything on this and a Silent Auction with some very expensive signed sporting memorabilia, not sure if any of this got bought.

We left around 5ish, I was completely exhausted with a thumping headache, but we had had a good time. If we hear of another one happening I would consider going again, although I’d know to eat beforehand.

There is a video of the event here, for some reason I can’t insert it from YouTube into this post.

Advertisement