A NEWBRIDGE netball team has helped raise more than £1,300 towards Jack’s Appeal following a hike up Pen y Fan.

Members of Tab Life community netball team raised £730 following the sponsored walk in May, with £500 since being matched by HSBC in Newport. The bank also held a charity bucket collection recently which raised an additional £125, bringing the total raised between the two groups to around £1,350.

The Argus has teamed up with the parents of tragic Oakdale teen, Jack Thomas, who died suddenly from a previously undetected heart arrhythmia in February 2012, aged just 15.

The aim of the campaign is to provide heart defibrillators to every secondary in Gwent and the Rhymney Valley, by working alongside charity Welsh Hearts who are supplying the potentially life-saving machines.

Money continues to come in for the appeal, which has now raised around £12,500, and has supplied ten schools in the Gwent and Rhymney Valley areas with a heart defibrillator since its launch in January this year.

It now leaves 25 out of the 52 schools across Gwent’s five local authorities, including the Rhymney Valley, without a defibrillator, with more schools being lined up ready for the start of the academic year in September.

Michelle Moseley, 45, is the captain of Tab Life community netball team in Newbridge and has known Jack’s parents, June and Grant Thomas, for many years.

She said: “We didn’t do it for the publicity but we were really pleased to have raised the money for such a great cause.

“We were all absolutely devastated when Jack passed away – beyond belief. God knows what June and Grant go through every day. We wanted to do what we could and do something positive.”

Ms Moseley, herself a lecturer in Nursing at Cardiff University, added: “I’m only too aware of the need for these defibrillators. A lot of people my age we have a lot of children of a similar age [to Jack] so anything that can help make the difference in schools and sport centres should be supported.”

The Tab Life community netball team will train at Newbridge Leisure Centre at 8pm-10pm every Wednesday from September 3. New members are welcome.

BLOB

Argus readers can donate by going online to welshhearts.org/jacksappeal or by sending cheques payable to Welsh Hearts, to Temple Court, 13a Cathedral Road, Cardiff, CF11 9HA. Put reference “Jack Thomas defibs appeal” on the back of the envelope. Thank you.