Welcome to St Pats Karate Club

St Pats Karate club was set up in February 2007 with just one class 5/7pm every Friday, by instructor Sensei Rob Green. He was approached by a project called Grangetown and Butetown healthy living program and they supported the club financially for the first four weeks. The club was based at St Patrick’s Parish Hall Grangetown. That is were the name of our clubs come from.

Sensei Rob is a very experienced karateka, with over 25 years experience in Shotokan karate and having experience running 4 other clubs in Ely, Cathays, Splott and Trowbridge. He is a very active karateka competing in tournaments and attending training courses.

 In February 2007 while with the WSKA under chief instructor Sensei Gabriel Operanta who was Sensei Robs instructor since 1985, Sensei Rob opened his St Pats Club completely on his own, but did and still does have the great support from his wife Sue Green, who is the club secretary with a lot of experience running clubs.

With just one class at St Patricks Parish Hall, demand grew for more classes. Sensei Rob had a meeting with Mr Paul Catris head teacher of St Patrick’s School Grangetown at the meeting it was agreed that karate would run as an after school club on Mondays 4.45/5.45pm. This was and still is a great success with 25 to 30 students training every session.

 By December 2007 the club had entered 10 tournaments picking up no less than 33 medals including three Welsh titles. With such success Sensei Rob decided it was time to move the club to another level leaving the WSKA and joining the VGKO (Vale of Glamorgan karate Organisation) The Vales Chief instructor is Sensei Robert Copeland and club secretary Cathy Copeland. The decision to leave WSKA was not made lightly Sensei Rob had been with the WSKA for 25 years, but with the VGKO being the most successful organisation in Wales, he decided this was the best move for the club, as the vale would show great support to the club in terms of high standard karateka for our students to train with, a great instructor for Sensei Rob and great administration guidance from Cathy for Sue.

In March 2008 Sensei Rob opened another after school club in St Cuthbert’s Cardiff Bay.Again this class was a success with 15 to 25 students at each session.
With the reputation of St Pats Karate Clubs growing Sensei Rob opened a class in St Paul’s Parish Hall Grangetown. With 20/25 students’ training in St Paul’s he was very pleased at how well the clubs were growing.
At all the clubs Sensei found that he had a growing number of students under 7 years old wanting to train so he opened a class at St Paul’s for students aged 4 to 7 years this class was opened up every  sunday 11.45/ 12.30 and was called Little Samurai. karate club This class is a fun way to introduce young children to Shotokan karate. We have a club mascot that comes in most Sessions to train with the children (they love him) his name is Phoenix the cat. Little Samurai also has its own grading system to help develop the students. Sensei Rob wanted this class to be great fun, with the students learning karate by using the kick bags and other items so the children would enjoy an introduction to Shotokan karate. (we now have a little samurai karate class every saturday and sunday in st pauls hall paget street grangetown at 11.45-12.30 on both days , as well as a little samurai class in the gathering place st athans on a thursday evening 5.45-6.30 and they are growing well ,)
Sensei Rob then opened another class in a different part of Cardiff, The Holy Family School Pentrabane.

Sensei Rob was at the point of turning his hobby into a full time job and in September 2008 he opened 3 more classes in Woodlands Special Needs School, Howells College and The Star Sports Centre in splott. And further a field in St Athan he opened 2 more classes in the Gathering Place.

in febuary 2010 st pats moved associations for the last time this time to the WSKO  under sensei jason ashcroft the reason for this was because the VGKO had slightly changed the structure of its grading system and the rules with in the association no longer suited the students of st pats karate club , this was a with great sadness has the club had enjoyed great sucess under the VGKO  and competiton karate but rob green felt in order for us to move forward we needed to be with a different organisation that would allow the club to move forward but still have guidence in terms of karate , and the WSKO has given us , during the first 6 months of 2010 the club focused on a new jouney with disability karate the club set up a disibility class and set out to find students that would like to take part in shotokan karate this was a great struggle to start but it is now a great sucess with the club haveing about 20 students with some kind of disibilty ranging from wheelchair students , visually impaired and blind students , and also teaching students with ceribal puarse and learning disibiltys with rob also looking for students with hearing impediments and deaf stuents having already had the pleasure of teaching such students at cetain venues such as llanishen high school in cardiff as well as in aber vale this has been a sucess and with the aim to be to get these guys into the competitons , in july 2010 bbc wales today filmed the club for the disability class a head of a competiton hosted by the WKGB in this competiton the WKGB held 2 disability catergories for disability kareate students and the jouney to help make disability karate in competion had taken a big step , the club then regained the competion curcuit winning a few more medals but most of all making a big impact into disability karate , we feel that we know have a wide range of classes with a reel future for karateka of all ages gender and ability with a grading syllabus to keep to tradition of shotokan karate going and also with the students know learning the 20 precepts of gichin funakoshi , as well as soon having to know and perform  the application of the katas they are learning to grade thanks to the knowlege passed on to the club through the WSKO  

We now have classes in:

7 SCHOOLS                          2 LEISURE CENTERS             2 CHURCH HALLS                                       
St Patricks, Grangetown                                                             
Windsor clive primary               Western Leisure Center, Ely     St Pauls Parish Hall, Grangetown
Holyfamily, Pentebane
st pauls primary
millbank primary
Plas Mawr High School, Fairwater
glyn deruw high schools
corpus christy high school
cantonian high school
miccleston high school

1 COMMUNITY CENTER
The Gathering Place, St Athan

1 DISABILITY CLASS                1 ADULT ONLY CLASS     1  4-8 YRS CLASS

St pats karate club we feel has achieved a lot within the small time we have been running like all clubs we have had our problems to but have also come through them , we respect all karate clubs has karate is for peace not to creaate enemys the WSKA were and still are a great association with a great senior instructor , as well as the VGKO , but as all great clubs will tell you doing what is best for the club and the students it represents is what is important and st pats has found the right organisation for it to be under the WSKO this has no bad raflection on the associations it has been under and is greatfull for the knowledge they have passed on we feel that the 20 precepts are important in the world that we live in and can be used in order in making a good character mainly in children and the application of the katas needs to be learned in order for karate to be practised and know we feel we are ready to move on as a club in a great and united organisation .
St pats karate club was founded in 2007 with just 1 black belt 2nd dan and 3, 7th kyus yellow belt and just 1 class 5 - 7pm every friday , we have grown to having alsmost 20 classes a week including classes for 4 - 8 years of age , uder 16s years of age , over 16 years of age disability classes as well as that we have after school classes in 5 primary schools , 1 high school and also have lunch time classes running in the 5 x 60 activites in 5 high schools , 
we are not all about competion karate we have a syllabue which we feel covers all aspects of shotokan karate , phisical , philosiphy , technical , also kata and kumite
, we have competed in competiton and feel it is an important part of modern day karate , with in 3 years we have know got a club with history be it a small one we have competed in 36 competitons picking up 164 medals which include 28 ist places and some biig national competitons such as welsh and british championships which
you can see all 165 medals though our medal history page.
For those of you who are looking for a friendly welcoming club with a future and a real goal to develop you at performance as well as character this is the club for you.
For more information on training times view our class times on the this web site or feel free to contact myself on 07878788034 or 0229344948

Thank You Sensei Rob Green