Thanks for the response. Your comments noted about security, I stripped all extra code for fault finding, but will investigate your suggestions. FYI, the form is accessed by a restricted encrypted login to the website.
Removed the @ didnt make any difference. The query does work and posts all the info except the $trainee value which currently appears as / in the database field, which I believe to be the closing / of the /> in the <input...

I am trying create a form for my club which takes info from a database to enable a sub selection of trainees from the database. Then additionally select a from a list of events and INSERT both back into a database. It writes to the database OK and loops through the correct number of times but doesnt pass $trainee value to the database
What is failing is the passing of the info from
print ' <input type="hidden" name="Trainee"...