Saturday 23 October 2010

"Martin Corry has come on board and I'm very hopeful for Matt Dawson and Mark Ramprakash too"

 Can you help Declan with your contacts to the Captains of this world?

Some of you may know the story already of when my son Louis was made captain of the U12s school rugby team and I went out to buy him a book on what captains should do.

While I found the weighty works by Sir Clive Woodward, Mike Brearley and the like, I could find nothing for kids. So grasping the initiative, Louis  and I wrote to a few leading captains asking for their words of wisdom, advice and top tips on how they do their jobs. To our great delight very many wrote back, including;

Malcolm Alker – Karen Atkinson - Rob Andrew - Leighton Baines –Rory Best - Ian Botham - Geoff Boycott - Lee Briers - Matthew Burke - Mark Butcher - Will Carling – Bob Casey - Mike Catt - Mark Chilton – Seb Coe - Jonathan Davies - Robin Ejsmond-Frey – Andy Griffin – Gavin Hastings - Matt Holland - Kelly Holmes - Stuart Hooper - John Inverdale - Justin Langer - Mark Lawrenson - Tom Lehman - Gary Lineker - Rhona Martin - Brian Moore - Martyn Moxon - Graeme Murty - Jamie Peacock - Paul Sculthorpe - Kevin Sinfield - Jeremy Snape - Ray Stubbs - Richard Swain - Tanni-Grey Thompson - Andy Todd - Sam Torrance - Michael Vaughan - Hugh Vyvyan - Henry Winter - Jo Yapp – Kevin Davies - Ben Hawes

We have permission to publish their tips and specialist sports publishers A&C Black (part of the Bloomsbury group, publishers of the Harry Potter books) have recently agreed to publish, ‘So you want to be Captain?’ in the autumn of 2011 – see the first working of the front cover attached. I have promised a proportion of any profits will be donated to Sports Relief in 2012, although I am in correspondence with them to endorse the book, which will see hopefully a greater contribution to their coffers.

I am therefore now redoubling my efforts to get even bigger and more high profile contributors on board and it is for that reason now that I contact you.

Friends of friends and networking often produces the best results, so I’m kindly asking if you might forward this email to any great captains that you know, or your friends might be in contact with. All well known captains’ contributions would be greatly welcomed, but of course really big names like Martin Johnson and David Beckham and current leaders such as Rio Ferdinand, Jessica Ennis, Andrew Strauss,

Steven Gerrard, John Terry and Lewis Moody would be the icing on the cake. A few sentences is all I’m after or even bullet points that I can ‘tidy up’, just some key pointers as to what you as a captain do or try to do.


Very many thanks in anticipation of help!


Declan Gane
M 07963 285212

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