Ely Tigers Girls Rugby – Spotted in Ely

The number of women playing rugby in the UK has increased over the past five years, but it is still not a sport that all girls and women can play.

At Ely Tigers we love to encourage women and girls to ‘have a go’ and see for themselves what rugby is really about as a sport for girls and women. We have a great team of coaches who run fun and friendly training sessions twice a week when the season starts in September. Over the last 2 years we have doubled the number of girls we train with Ely Tigers and now have some fantastic ‘Girls’ Rugby’ shirts.

After a good training season and finding our feet at the various Pitch Up and Play events with the Ely Tigers Girls, we wanted to encourage more Girls to come and try Rugby so that we could enjoy the benefit of playing more competitive rugby with the ECRU Clusters. We decided to run a 3 week recruitment opportunity for Girls to come along and have a go. No previous experience was necessary, just come and see what we are about, meet the players and coaches and try rugby for free. Local secondary schools were invited via email to put up a poster and offer the training sessions to Girls at the colleges to come and try rugby for free.

The Ely Tigers Girls players themselves were also encouraged to bring friends who might be interested in Rugby. On 3 Wednesday evenings in June (5, 12 and 19) we had 1 hour training sessions. On the last Wednesday, after training, we had a social time in the clubhouse and gave the girls a chance to chat and have pizza together.

It was a success. We had a number of girls come to the free sessions. Most of them would like to come back and play girls rugby at Ely Tigers.

We now have girls in the age categories U12, U14 and U16. As a club we would like to see more girls being able to participate in rugby matches.

If you know someone who wants to try rugby or just come and see what we do, come along to our training sessions. The September training sessions are free to attend.

For more information please email [email protected]

Press release from Ely Tigers