The launch of my website on June 19, 2005 was followed by the announcement that I would be establishing the Richard Vaughan Badminton Academy on July 25, 2005.  Within a matter of weeks a group of elite junior players commenced weekly coaching and training sessions, supplemented by Dunes training and playing in the re-established Hawthorns Badminton Ladder. 

I am delighted that with the dedicated help of the other coaches we have been able to build on the players existing training programmes through a whole range of on and off court activities. It has been so rewarding to receive the positive feedback from players and their parents.  All of the players have had good results already this season and we have confidence that they will continue to progress their development through hard work and dedication to their sport.

Due to my playing and training commitments the Academy is totally dependent on the input of Don Griffiths and the other coaches and sparring players that have included Piret Hamer, Zhu Min, Michael Lewis, Liam Ingram, Vaughn Tovey, Chris Davies, and Kerry Ann Sheppard. There is also a team of people working at the organisation and administration of the Academy including Leon Vaughan, Morgan Vaughan, Alun Jones, Vaughn Tovey, Geoff Thomas, and Sue Thomas.

With limited time I have focused my coaching efforts towards the weekly Academy session.  The development of elite junior players is fundamental to the future success of Wales badminton and I feel it is in this area that my limited available time is dedicated.  I do however appreciate that the long term successful development of players requires recruitment of new players, grass roots initiatives, and appropriate coaching and guidance through each of the stages of development.       

In recent months we have made considerable progress in establishing a separate group of development players and have also formalised links to clubs.  Our efforts in this respect are however limited due to funding constraints.  I am however absolutely delighted to take this opportunity to announce that we have secured a main sponsor, Finsbury Foods Group, who have their "Memory Lane Cakes" production facility in Cardiff.  With the support of Lyndon Williams at the Welsh Badminton Union we have applied for matched funding grant from Sportsmatch Cymru.  If our Sportsmatch application is successful we will be able to expand all of our activities but in particular the grass roots and development initiatives will be secured and progressed at the earliest opportunity.

Over recent weeks we have completed two training camps. Each Camp involved two days of planned sessions which were tailored to the stage of development and competence of individual players attending the sessions.  Each Court had an allocated coach at all times and the key objective was to give players personalised coaching and other guidance. These camps also attracted top English players as well as the best Welsh juniors. Again the feedback has all been positive and it is our intention to run further Camps in the future.

Finally I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those coaches, sparring players, players, parents etc that have supported me and my colleagues in making this such a successful year and helping achieve so much in a short period of time.  Inevitably there are a small number of individuals who would like to see our efforts come to nothing and who are content to criticise our initiatives to produce outstanding badminton players, but we are a strong Team and determined to be successful, and I am very confident that we will.

Richard Vaughan