Mr Mayor and Mayoress, Vice Lord Lieutenant of Greater Manchester, Honorary Alderman of the Borough, Deputy Lieutenants, Members and Officers of the Council, Honoured and Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.

 

It is with great pride that I rise tonight to second the resolution to grant the rare honour of Freedom of the Borough to Nicola White.

Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity once more to offer my congratulations to Nicola and her team mates in the GB hockey team for their splendid effort in taking the Gold.

Team GB’s performance at the Rio Games was spectacular with the highest medal score in history – and all of our athletes deserve the highest praise for their determination and commitment.

Secondly, I must say it is always great when people from our Borough do exceptionally well in any field and we have a particularly long and proud history of achievement in many competitive sports.

Also as an elected representative for Shaw, I was especially pleased to see someone also born in the town achieving such greatness on the sporting field.

Now my personal experience of hockey is now a long and distant memory since I played it when I was 16 – 17 at school.

Do not be too shocked!

Now what I can remember is that it was the quickest team sport I have ever played and at times it was particularly very physical and sometime quite vicious, especially the girls as we played in mixed sex groups!

I am sure I still have some of the bruises from those games today.

But this is not about me it is about Nicola who I note, first took up with sport of hockey at Hulme Grammar School and then honed her skills at Saddleworth Hockey Club.

I do hope that Nicola’s example on the sporting field will inspire many more residents of our Borough to take up more sports with enthusiasm and energy in our schools, colleges and clubs – particularly our younger residents – and, that like Nicola and her team mates, they will strive for excellence in everything that they do.

I hope particularly that we will see an upsurge in the take up of hockey in our Borough, and that we might see more sporting champions in this sport in the future.

But for today our focus should be on recognising and celebrating Nicola’s achievements and I am very honoured to be able to support the proposal to make Nicola a most esteemed Freewoman of the Borough.

Both Nicola and her friends, family and team mates must be very proud today – and rightly so.  I know I am– we all warmly congratulate her. And I formally second the proposal to make her a Freewoman of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham.