A MARATHON game of rugby 7's has seen six players from Minety Rugby Club write themselves into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Ben Collins; Matt Stone; Matt Chisholm; Matt Cross; Garin Garland; and Ben Langridge took part in the longest game of rugby 7's in history, playing alongside Minety’s good friends from the Horus 7's team from the RAF and Witney Rugby Club.

Over the weekend of the July 29, 2017, Minety’s magnificent six, aided and abetted by a huge number of supporters from Minety RFC, joined forces with players from Witney Rugby club to form the Witney Barbarians 7 a side team.

They took on the RAF team, Horus, in a gruelling and hugely challenging marathon game of rugby 7’s lasting over 24 hours.

Since then 18 weeks have passed, during which over 700 pieces of evidence have been passed to the Guiness Book of Records organisation.

These have been assessed and it was finally confirmed last week that the record attempt has been ratified and that the new record has been officially set and recognised.

Minety player, Rob Bugden, a member of the RAF team at Brise Norton, was badly injured in a parachute training accident in the US in Janury 2016.

The club forged links with Rob’s RAF team, named Horus and shortly after the accident, Minety RFC supported Horus as they fund raised for Rob.

The club was delighted when Horus approached the club with a view to challenging the record for a continuous game of rugby 7’s.

Ben Collins, a university friend of Rob’s and a stalwart member of the Minety club said: “We’d wanted to support Rob as much as possible and had met up with all of his friends at Brise.

“We knew that we had to play for at least 24 hours to be in with a chance of setting a record that the Guinness Book of Records would accept so initially we started with a view to playing for 30 hours non stop.

“However, after 12 hours we all knew that 30 hours was way beyond us and so we settled to establishing a world record of just over 24 hours.

“Both teams had to have 12 players with seven on the field at any one time. After 1 hour’s play we were allowed a whole squad rest period of 5 minutes.

“The main problem was the sheer mental and physical tiredness that we all felt. You had to force yourself to keep alert and going.

“Everytime we stopped for a rest we had to take our socks off and dry them and the rub talcum powder into our feet to try and keep them dry and avoid the inevitable blisters.

“My toe nails have still not recovered. It was unbelievably hard and we would have been devastated if we had not succeeded in breaking the record. It’s certainly one of the most challenging and uncomfortable experiences of my life.”

In addition to setting a world record, the players also raised money for one of Rob’s associated charities: Cakes 4 Casualties (www.cakes4casualties.co.uk/).

This small organisation visits rehabilitation centres for the Army, Navy and RAF around the country.