Lymm RFC v Tynedale RFC – Saturday 8th February 2025

As ever, it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome you to Beechwood for our 17th league fixture (and 9th home game) of the season. I would also like to extend an exceedingly warm welcome to our visitors today, Tynedale RFC.

We start this week’s Welcome with a quiz: what do the following sports have in common – Rock Climbing, Boxing, Archery, Karate, Gymnastics, Basketball, Weightlifting, Yoga, Rollerblading, Skateboarding, Golf, Parkour, Dodgeball, Volleyball and Fencing? The answer is that, in a poll of 1,000 children aged 10-16, they are the top 15 sports that the children wished they could play at school. You will notice that rugby union does not feature in that list. More recently, Ernst & Young LLP published the results of poll they undertook of over 4,000 adults in the UK, which indicated that Football, Running, Formula 1, Swimming and Boxing saw the highest levels of engagement amongst Gen-Z adults (18-24 year olds).  Again rugby did not figure in those engagement figures.

In response to the acknowledged decline in school rugby, the RFU commissioned a report, entitled “Changing the Game: the Future of Schools Rugby in England” which was published towards the end of 2024.

The RFU Report listed four main reasons for that decline – schools are concerned about space and facilities (e.g. football can be played successfully on a smaller than full size pitch); rugby is seen as a ‘difficult game to coach’; generalist PE staff lack the confidence to introduce the contact elements of the game, which lack of confidence is heightened because of the well-publicised risk of head injury; and rugby union has an image problem because it is perceived as a game for ‘posh white boys’.

The RFU Report summarised the problem facing the wider game because of the decline in school rugby as follows “without rugby in schools, there will be much less rugby in the community, a much weakened professional and national game and a diminished audience. This is an urgent issue approaching crisis point” and one of the key recommendations of that Report was there should be three versions of the game played in schools – non contact, reduced contact, full contact.

As to the roll out of those 3 versions, Sir Bill Beaumont said in his letter circulated on 3 February 2025, that “£30m a year [will be] invested for each of the next four years, as the initial phase of a ten year investment programme with more coaches, more resources for clubs, and accessible forms of T1 non-contact rugby being taken into thousands of schools”

Although credit should be given to the RFU for addressing this issue, my view is that they are a bit late to the party. A simple Google search against “Decline of School rugby” will reveal that it has been an issue for many years now. For example, an article available on the Liverpool St Helens website published in 2016 said: “You could reel off the number of schools no longer playing inter-school rugby fixtures and without too much trouble compile a list from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire alone that would make interesting reading … but when analyzing why numbers in club rugby have declined, look no further than the supply of players coming from the schools “

As to the RFU’s suggested roll out of a “non-contact” version of the game, I remain to be convinced that it has been thought through properly. Do we not already have well-established versions of “non-contact rugby” i.e. touch rugby and tag rugby? I also query whether schools will have the appetite for introducing a new sport, particularly one which comes with such negative perceptions. The decline of rugby in schools is one of a myriad issues that the RFU are currently grappling with but at least they have recognised the problem and are trying to address it. As one of many clubs up and down the country which rely heavily on links with local schools, all we can do is hope for the best but until something concrete emerges from the RFU’s proposals, clubs like ours must continue to do our best to plug the school rugby gap.

As to our last 2 fixtures, they both had a touch of “Groundhog Day” about them. Against both Sheffield Tigers and Harrogate, late tries in both games saw Lymm come away victorious with five point wins – Lymm 30 – Sheffield Tigers 26 and Harrogate 31 – Lymm 36. I suspect that today’s game will be another close encounter – both teams have identical records in their last 5 league fixtures (won 4; lost 1) – and when we played Tynedale away in last October, it was only a Nathan Beesley try in the 79th minute that saw us come away with a 32-37 win. I have no doubt that Tynedale will be out for revenge today.

All that leaves me to say (as usual) is that I wish all the teams, their coaches and support staff, who represent Lymm at every level, from Minis & Juniors up to Senior Rugby the best of luck this weekend.