Wasps Legends Long Lunch 2024 Review

On Thursday, 10th October, the Wasps Legends Charitable Foundation held their annual Long Lunch at the fantastic M Restaurant, Threadneedle Street.

The Long Lunch is one of the Legend’s largest UK fundraiser, and this year’s event featured an audience with Wayne Barnes OBE, the world’s most experienced Test referee! Wayne regaled guests with some hilarious and heartwarming tales from his remarkable career, which included over 250 premiership games, 111 test matches, including five Rugby World Cups and 26 Six Nations matches, officiated.

As is customary at Legend’s events, the Long Lunch also featured a superb auction and raffle, which raised valuable funds for the Foundation.

Following the introduction of our new grant giving programme, we were thrilled to award our first Long Lunch Event Grant to the excellent Millimetres 2 Mountains! We can now announce that due to the generosity of our guests, we have been able to subsequently award a grant of £10,000 to M2M, which will enable them to continue their transformative and life-changing work. To see some of their work, see the video below.

We are also delighted to announce that at our Long Lunch, the fantastic Star Scheme were revealed as the recipient of our Annual Grant Programme. Star* is a charitable organisation dedicated to transforming the lives of young people facing Adverse Childhood and Community Experiences (ACEs) and/or mental health challenges through grassroots rugby. Our Annual Grant of £25,000 will be put towards establishing three new star* rugby clubs, supporting 75 young people and their families. We look forward to working closely with Star Scheme over the coming year, and watching them change lives through the spirit of rugby. Their incredible work is showcased below, in their recent ACES are hidden video.

Thank you to all of our generous sponsors & donors, the fantastic Wayne Barnes OBE and our guests for making this another unforgettable event and enabling us to continue changing lives through the spirit of rugby.

To see more images of the event, head to our gallery here.