15/08/2026
West Riding Masonic Charities Ltd. rolled out an impressive £10,000 of sponsorship to back the volunteer programme at the 2026 Westfield Health British Transplant Games staged in Sheffield in August.
It was the first time that the Province of Yorkshire, West Riding’s charitable arm had become involved in the Games who were paying their third visit to the Steel City and their fifth to Yorkshire.
The Transplant Games’ aim is to demonstrate the benefits of transplantation, encouraging transplant patients to regain fitness, whilst increasing public awareness of the need for more people to join the NHS Organ Donation Register and discuss their wishes with their families. They also seek to thank and celebrate donor families and their gift of life.
Impressively, the games that started in Portsmouth in 1978, have been staged annually ever since and 17 cities and regions from around the United Kingdom have been host venues. The 2025 Games were held in Oxford.
The 2026 games saw more than 2,500 competitors including over 1,000 transplant recipients, living donors and members of donor families participating in 26 sports at various venues around Sheffield.
That wide range of sports included athletics, archery, badminton, bowls, cycling, football, golf, netball, squash and table tennis.
For three West Riding Freemasons in particular the staging of the games in Sheffield held a particular resonance.
Worshipful Brother Ian Royles PPGReg of Pen*stone Lodge No.1462, who is Province’s Chair of Area Four Charity Committee as well as being a Director of West Riding Masonic Charities Activities Ltd., served as a volunteer for the Game’s four-day programme in recognition of his father Mick’s heart transplant 25 years earlier.
He said: “It seems the least I can do as we celebrate the 25 years since Dad received his ‘new’ heart.”
Mick was close to death when he received his life-saving surgery in his home city at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital in May 2001.
Now aged 82 Mick lives a full and active life watching his great grandchildren and grandchildren grow up as well as continuing to follow his soccer team Sheffield United’s fortunes at Bramall Lane with his other son, Paul.
He says: “I’m reasonably fit. I go walking and play Crown Green Bowls. I might get out of breath now and again, but I feel like an 82-year-old man with the usual aches and pains.
“The transplant has improved the quality of my life immensely because I was so ill beforehand.”
Worshipful Brother Peter Duffy PPDGDC from Leodiensis Lodge No.4029 in Otley is another transplant survivor.
He received a new liver in April 2023 at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds. He benefitted from the larger section of the transplanted organ while the smaller part went to a child.
Now 69-year-old Peter from Adel in Leeds, who manages a accountancy practice in Headingley, Leeds, says: “My wife and family would tell you I have a 100 per cent better quality of life than I had in 2022.”
He added: “I still see the sunshine in the morning. I look at everything with the glass half full.”
In light of his story and connection to the fraternity, Peter is delighted that the Province of Yorkshire, West Riding pledged to sponsor the volunteer programme at this year’s Games in Sheffield.
“Freemasons are proud champions of great causes, and I’m delighted our Province has chosen to sponsor this year’s Games, right on our doorstep in Sheffield,” he said.
“Transplant recipients do so well and should absolutely be applauded, but the only reason people can take part in the Games is because someone, or their family, made that decision to give the gift of life. The real heroes are the people who donate.”
Worshipful Brother Jason Shettler PPDGReg from Huddersfield’s Connaught and Truth Lodge No.521, supports the games in recognition of the stem cell transplant his 11-year-old son Jensen had received four years ago.
Explained Jason: “Jensen was suffering from a rare genetic disease called Lymphoproliferative and had to spend some time in the Great Northern Children’s Hospital.
“That stay involved being in isolation for quite some time because his immune system needed to be rebuilt.
“We’re really grateful to the donor and wrote a letter to them expressing our gratitude.”
But Jensen and his family are participants in the Transplant Games too.
Jason explained: “Me, my wife Beverley, Jensen and his brother Ethan took part in the two and half kilometre Donor’s Race.
“We did the same in 2025 at Blenheim Palace and were really excited to take part again this year because the even was started from near City Hall in the middle of Sheffield”.
Also playing a major role in the games were the volunteers from the Masonic Teddies for Loving Care charity. They ensure that all the young competitors – and some of the older ones – received a teddy bear for their efforts.
The British Transplant Games are the flagship project of the charity Transplant Sport.
British Transplant Games
