A Master Class with Craig Fallon

Faversham Judo Club hosted a spectacular event in March when Craig Fallon, former World , European, Commonwealth Games and World cup Champion also Beijing Olympic representative, provided 100 judo players from all over Kent with a Master Class.

Fallon was assisted by Dr. Andrew Moshanov, himself a former Russian National player and Coach, plus former Coach to the Chinese National team and now Technical director to the British Judo Association.

Due to the number of players on each mat the pair also enlisted the help of Faversham instructors Trevor Davies, Lee Reeves, George Holbrook and brothers David and Daniel Diamond.

The morning started with 70 junior players aged between 6 and 14 years old being shown exercises to improve agility, ground holding techniques, including escapes and turnovers from those holds. Fallon then moved on to standing techniques before giving a display of some of the throws which have made him so successful. The youngsters spent a total of one and a half hours on the mat followed by a question and answer session.

The Faversham club provided everybody that took part with photographs of Craig Fallon who then spent 45 minutes signing them for every one of the extremely appreciative youngsters. Once the junior players had finished it was time for the senior grades to take their turn, they were treated to a similar warm up session followed by more advanced versions of the techniques shown to the younger players, these also included arm locking and strangling techniques prohibited for juniors to use.

Everybody that took part felt that it was a real privilege to work with a player of Craig Fallon’s calibre and were extremely grateful to Faversham Judo Club for providing them with the opportunity to do so.