Try Rugby – London Irish Introduces Children to Our Favourite Sport
London Irish will be running Try Rugby, a new initiative to introduce young children in the area to rugby. We are doing this with our partners Wooden Spoon and Sport England through the National Sports Foundation.
One of the things we are hoping to do, as well as getting more young people to play the game, is help tackle the growing issue of childhood obesity. Today nearly a third (31.1 per cent) of 11-year-olds1 are now overweight or obese and the statistic is rising. Exercise is a great way of dealing with this and rugby is the perfect sport to do it - all shapes and sizes have their place in rugby - just look at Delon and Steffon Armitage.
Children in the Slough are just some of the 23,000 children throughout England who will benefit from the initiative. Seilala Mappusua is a huge supporter of Try Rugby and he said ‘In any rugby team you will see a vast difference in the heights, weights and overall sizes of players. Just look at the London Irish squad; Nick Kennedy and James Hudson are both about 6’ 8” and 17 stone, Paul Hodgson is 5ft 8 and weighs 12 stone and Peter Richards is 5’ 9” and weighs nearly 14 stone. They are all fit and very health conscious but there is nearly a whole foot difference in their heights and 3 stone difference in their weights! Consequently rugby is the ideal vehicle to engage and motivate youngsters – they don’t need to feel self-conscious about their size as rugby needs every shape and size in a team. What’s more, playing rugby can engender a great many positive values such as respect, team work and having fun while exercising.’
Wooden Spoon along with Sport England through the National Sports Foundation have each contributed £130,000 to Try Rugby; the scheme will, see all 12 Premiership Clubs including Leeds Carnegie, offering 23,000 pupils aged 8-10 across England the chance to try out rugby, many of whom will be trying rugby for the first time.
Community Development Manger Philippos Kyriacoua said, ‘Try Rugby gives local schools a course in tag rugby that will benefit children and teachers and will enable rugby to still be played long after we have completed the coaching series, tag rugby is a pretty straightforward sport and it is lots of fun. Recent research has shown that rugby players are seen as very positive role models which we hope will also inspire the participating children.
Try Rugby kicked off at Montem Primary School, Slough all thanks to Sport England, Premier Rugby and Wooden Spoon.
If your school is interested in becoming involved , please click here to contact us.