CROWDS flocked to Walcot on Saturday as the Nepalese Association of Wiltshire held its annual Swindon Cup competition.

The event, which took place at Buckhurst Park Community Centre, saw football teams and ladies volleyball players come together for a day of food and sport in the summer sunshine.

Organiser Manju Bura, 27, from Stratton, said: “The Swindon Cup started in 2007 as a community barbecue to bring people together.

We thought it would be a good, easy way to get people out for some summer fun and it’s always a really popular event.”

“Since then it has gown and grown each year with different sports teams taking part. We don’t have as many this year as we’d like, but it should still be a great day.”

Medals and trophies were presented to the winners later in the day and there was a wide selection of food to sample throughout.

Organisers said around 200 people to attended most of whom came from the town’s Nepalese community.

The day’s main event was the women’s volleyball tournament and it was only the second time the sport had been hosted.

Maita Limbu, 51, said: “This year is unlike previous years because we’ve had a few restrictions with football pitches. There are so many other programmes going on this weekend that we struggled to attract teams from outside, so we decided to make it more ‘in-house’ and bring everyone from Swindon’s Nepalese community together.

“Ladies volleyball has taken priority this year and we want to get everybody here to have a great day.

“We are serving food and offering people the chance to watch some good games of football and volleyball.”

The Nepalese Association of Wiltshire, which started in 2006, is based in Swindon and the majority of Nepalese people arrived in the town after 2005 when the government decided to give permanent settlement to some Gurkhas.

The association is also designed to help Nepalese people newly arrived in the UK to cope providing information on transport facilities and where to go for certain things.