We are disappointed not to receive funding from UK Sport on this occasion for the plans we had presented. These would have allowed us to support our Great Britain’s women’s team with world-class opportunities and develop more regional programmes to progress our sport.
We understand and appreciate the difficulty UK Sport face at what is an unprecedented time for all of us. However, we did hope that our proposal offered good value for money and
a genuine chance to deliver substantial sporting success.
There will be a National Teams fund, that is due to be announced in January, which we are grateful for. In addition, there has been an extension to the Aspiration Fund for the Great Britain women’s team. This will now run until December 2021.
Our programmes remain reliant on philanthropic support, who have in some cases singlehandedly funded these since 2012. Within this uncertain time due to the impact of the pandemic, we need significant backing to maintain the high-performance initiatives as we have no promises of further donations.
Despite this setback, we will not be deterred as we seek to press on with our ambitious plans to make goalball in the UK internationally recognised and acclaimed. We wish to thank our athletes, coaches and the Goalball Family for their ongoing support.
