THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS
By DAVID FERGUSON


GLASGOW Hawks' first league wins of the season have lifted morale around Anniesland, but they also provided a lift to two former players who set off on an incredible expedition to climb the three highest mountains in Africa next week.



Ricky Munday and Ally Maclay are players well-known in Scottish rugby circles, but Munday, in particular, has never been one to plod through the same kind of challenges year after year. After helping Hawks win the Division 1 Championship and Scottish Cup titles, he turned his attention to more strenuous matters and duly ran across the Sahara Desert in the infamous, and deadly, Marathon Des Sables.

This year he took on a secondment through his employer Bank of Scotland Corporate to Kenya, initially working under the arm of the Balcraig Foundation at the Jonathan Gloag Academy with 180 orphaned and abandoned children before launching his own bid to raise money for the Foundation by climbing Mount Stanley in Uganda, Mount Kenya in Kenya and then Tanzania's famed Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak.

He has been joined by Maclay and having witnessed first-hand the problems that blight Kenyan children their enthusiasm to raise money for the Foundation has grown immeasurably.

"The children here are amazing," Munday said, "particularly considering the incredibly difficult start they've had in life and it has been a wonderful pleasure to spend time with them. It has been a great experience for me and I hope we have been able to give them something in our time here.

"The expedition was always the big target at the end of my time here, and now that we're just days away there is an element of fear I have to admit. It's becoming very real and we know it's going to be incredibly challenging for all of us. The first one, up Mount Stanley, is happening in the wettest part of the year in the area; we have steep and slippery slopes to climb, snow and glaciers; and Mount Kenya's highest summit will take us over 10 hours to climb. But we have been training very hard for this and we can't wait now to get going."

The Hawks' duo's expedition has been costly in itself, but a variety of backers and successful fundraising events have ensured the trip will go ahead.

Munday admitted: "We still need more help, but we are at a point now where the expedition will go on. We couldn't have raised the money ourselves."

This article was posted on 9-Oct-2008, 07:10 by Hugh Barrow.