Try Rugby – Newcastle Falcons Introduces Children to Our Favourite Sport

Newcastle Falcons 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 Micky Ward.
 
Children in the Tyne and Wear are just some of the 23,000 children throughout England who will benefit from the initiative. Phil Dowson 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 Falcons squad; Hall Charlton and Tom May are both about 5ft 10” and 14.5 stone, Carl Hayman is 6ft 4” and is 18st 10lbs and James Grindal is 5ft 9” and weighs 13st 4 lbs. They are all fit and very health conscious but there is nearly a 8“ difference in their heights and 6 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.

Danny Brown 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 kicks off on 1st October all thanks to Sport England, Premier Rugby and Spoon.