Something To Chew On

Rugby is the perfect vehicle to encourage a healthy and active lifestyle in young people and offers role model opportunities to children of all shapes and sizes. Newcastle Falcons players will be involved to demonstrate to the youngsters how a healthy lifestyle can benefit both your career options and general well-being.

Something to Chew On is a national programme which provides teachers with a selection of materials and training to deliver healthy eating advice and practical rugby coaching skills to Key Stage 2 primary school children.

In Newcastle, the programme takes place in 10 local schools and aims to; improve young people's understanding of what constitutes healthy eating and a healthy diet, increase young people's knowledge of food safety and increase young people's uptake of physical activity.

The 6 week programme delivers the following to both girls and boys;
Tag Rugby Coaching
Health Education Programme
Teacher Coach Education
A set of balls and tag belts for each school
A tag festival at the local cluster club
A tag festival at Kingston Park, with the winners representing Newcastle Falcons at the Guinness Premiership Final.

Newcastle and North Tyneside Tag Rugby Programme

The Foundation runs a six-week tag rugby programme with year 5/6 children in 46 local schools in conjunction with Newcastle School Sports Partnership.  The programme aims to engage children in the sport in sessions based outside of the normal school day. The children are invited to the local rugby club following their sessions to assist them to continue to play the sport following their school-based sessions. The sustainability of the project is ensured by a teacher training day held for each school. The programme culminates in six regional festivals followed by a King of Tag Event at Kingston Park.

NSPCC

The Foundation is working alongside the NSPCC to promote the national NSPCC Kick Bullying into Touch campaign.  The Foundation's involvement includes working with 30 Teesside schools, reaching around 30 primary school children with anti-bullying messages via practical activities and training. The campaign involves recruiting peer mentors in each school to lead and embed the programme throughout the school.

Drink Aware

The Foundation is running a Drink Aware programme.  First team players, backroom staff and Falcons Community Foundation coaches received drink awareness training this year. The Foundation now works with six local youth clubs to educate about the dangers of alcohol via practical and educational activities.

Show Racism the Red Card

The Foundation works closely with the national charity to organise anti-racism educational days at Kingston Park. Newcastle Falcon’s players are involved as positive role models in the anti-racism campaign and this is supplemented by a poster campaign distributed to community groups.

Matchday activities

Anyone who has watched a Newcastle Falcons home match will probably have seen one of the fun and inclusive match day activities.  These include; tag festivals, touch rugby competitions, student 7s rugby competitions, dance performances, skills proficiency days, and much more.

For more information on how to become involved in the please contact melanie.magee@newcastle-falcons.co.uk

Land Rover Cup

The Land Rover Cup is a one off rugby festival for 32 U11s and U12s teams which results in a trip to Twickenham to represent Newcastle Falcons in the national celebration event at the Guinness Premiership Final. The competition will be held at Ryton Rugby Club on Sunday 14th February and is open to all teams across Northumberland, Durham and Cumbria. Applications will be circulated via County CBs in November.

For more information on how to apply please contact melanie.magee@newcastle-falcons.co.uk

Learning Centre - Playing for Success

Our State of the Art Learning Centre, based at Kingston Park, accommodates Playing For Success; an after school club for 10 to 14 year olds to further their learning in a non-educational setting.

For further information, please logo on to http://www.falconslearning.co.uk/ or contact Elisabeth.stanley@newcastle-falcons.co.uk

Touch rugby

Winners of the Parliamentary Citizenship Impact Award 2009 at Westminster, the Falcons Community Foundation Touch Rugby League is one of the largest outside of London, with 32 teams competing across a wide variety of competitions every summer.

What is Touch Rugby?

Touch is Rugby’s answer to 5-a-side football – it’s fast, enjoyable, involves no contact and can be played by both young & old, males & females. Touch Rugby is such an easy game to play that even if you have never played rugby before you will have no problem picking it up.  In fact around half the participants will have never played rugby before!
It’s a great way of keeping fit or getting fit while enjoying an evening in the summer sunshine with friends enjoying drinks, music & a BBQ.

The Competitions

Corporate Touch Event

• One off Festival held on the first team pitch at Kingston Park, home of Newcastle Falcons in May.
• Teams are provided with expert coaching from Newcastle Falcons player for the entire evening.
• Following the presentations, the Hiding Place Bar is open for celebrations to begin!

Kingston Park Advanced League / Kingston Park Intermediate League / Kingston Park Social League

• Three competitions run simultaneously at Kingston Park to cater for all abilities.
• This League takes place on Wednesday evenings and will run for 8 weeks, beginning towards the end of May.
• The last night is a finals / presentation evening where all teams will be given the opportunity to win their respective competitions.
• BBQ, tuck shop and drinks offers every week.
• Coaching is available FOC to participating teams prior to the event.

O2 Scrum on the Beach @ Tynemouth Longsands

• One off tournament held at Tynemouth Beach to finish the touch rugby season with a bang!
• Inflatables, music, entertainment, sun and celebrity guests make this an unmissable event!

For further information on touch rugby events,
please contact Melanie.magee@newcastle-falcons.co.uk

NRU RDP

The Falcons Community Foundation work closely with Northumberland Rugby Union to organise a Regional Development Programme. Key skill areas which require development are identified across the game and age groups and coaching evenings are set up. Newcastle Falcons players design specific sessions to assist with the target area and deliver evenings accordingly.

For more information on these sessions please view http://clubs.rfu.com/CLUBS/portals/NorthumberlandRugbyUnionCB/

Try Dance Programme

Launched in 2009, this innovative programme works with 25 primary and 5 secondary schools in Newcastle to provide a six week school-based dance programme. Young people taking part in the training have the chance to perform during half-time at a Newcastle Falcons home match. Leading onto a resident “Falcons Dance Group” this programme is a fantastic opportunity for both girls and boys to become motivated to participate in an increasingly popular form of physical activity.
Piloted in Spring 2009, five primary schools and one secondary school took part in 6 dance lessons over the course of a school term. At the end of this period, all of the children performed on the pitch at Kingston Park in front of a crowd of 7,000 to celebrate their achievements. The programme is supported by Wooden Spoon, Newcastle School Sports Partnership and Sportsmatch, who are fantastic supporters of the scheme.
Melanie Magee, Falcons Community Foundation Manager commented,“ I cannot emphasize enough how big an impact the support given to us by the Wooden Spoon, Newcastle School Sports Partnership and Sportsmatch has had. Not only has their support been enabled us to employ a new member of staff, but we have been able to establish a new Dance programme; a long standing aim of the Foundation. This scheme utilizes the motivation of performing in front of thousands of people to encourage people to participate in physical activity. The support of the three organizations has made a real difference to the local community”.

For more information on Try Dance, please contact Melanie.magee@newcastle-falcons.co.uk

Coaching camps

The Foundation runs coaching camps lasting from one day to one week in various locations across the North East and Cumbria. From Residential camps to position specific camps and multi-sports camp to dance camp there really is something for everyone.

To find out where your nearest camp is click here www.rugbycamps.co.uk/newcastlefalcons