The Story Behind The Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation
OUR INSPIRATION
Meet Matt
Before he was Sergeant Matt Ratana, he was simply Matt: a New Zealander who'd crossed the world for rugby, and stayed for the people. He arrived in the UK in 1989 to play for London Irish, and over the years pulled on the shirt for a string of West London clubs before finding his home as Head Coach at East Grinstead Rugby Football Club - a role he held for three seasons, and a community he came to love as his own.
Those who played under him didn't describe a coach. They described a father figure. A mentor. A "true role model" with, in the words of his own club President, "so many ambitious plans" for the players and the club alike. He was known for an infectious laugh, and a big presence. As one of Matt's own teammates put it, he put everything building a family atmosphere of the club - training in the evening, then heading straight into a night shift, week in, week out.
That's who Matt was to rugby. To policing, he gave nearly 30 years of service with the Metropolitan Police, working the frontline in one of the most demanding roles in the force: a custody sergeant, responsible for the safety of everyone who passed through his station's doors.
On 25 September 2020, three months before he was due to retire, Matt was fatally shot at Croydon Custody Centre. He was 54.
The Foundation's Beginning
Building The Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation in Matt's Memory
The loss was felt far beyond his own club. Tributes came in from rugby communities across the country - from London Irish, from clubs he'd never even played for, from teammates who'd known him for decades and colleagues who'd known him for months. What came through every single one of them was the same thing: Matt showed up for people. Consistently, generously, without exception.
The Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation was created so that showing up for people wouldn't stop being Matt's legacy - it would become ours too. We wanted his belief in rugby's power to change a young life, and his instinct to be the adult who consistently turns up for someone else, to live on in the most fitting way we could think of: by doing exactly that, for young people who need it most.
We started in the heart of the Croydon community Matt knew and loved. Since then, we've grown steadily and purposefully - having supported community assets across Sussex and Surrey, now working across under-resourced London boroughs with a growing presence reaching further every year.
Discover our work.
Making a Difference
Our Purpose
On the field and in the classroom, we offer multiple opportunities for meaningful and consistent connection and mentoring.
The potential benefits are extensive:
- Regular contact with an emotionally available adult builds resilience to cope with challenges and nurtures self-confidence and healthy emotional expression.
- Rugby offers ideal opportunities for supported conflict de-escalation. We embrace moments of challenge as opportunities for learning to inspire change.
- Our programme develops emotional awareness, empathy and communication skills – an appropriate level of responsibility for both our own and others' mental health and wellbeing, supporting healthy, safe communities.
We aim to counter adversity and tackle inequality of opportunity, by enabling and developing supportive relationships and interpersonal skills through rugby. Our projects directly benefit marginalised young people and their families from under-resourced backgrounds, by providing a consistent pathway uniting home, school, and community clubs. Our flagship programme, TackleLondon, delivers the consistent, week-in-week-out mentoring that Matt believed in so strongly, and connects young Londoners with a pathway into community rugby.
Now You've Learnt Our Beginning...
Discover Our Projects
From TackleLondon and The MRRF Academy, to the Whānau Cup, the Marauders to the Ratana 7s - every project and event we run carries Matt's name onto the pitch and into communities that need it most. Different teams, different pathways, one belief: rugby changes lives.