News Archive

• Girls Competition Entry Process and Round Dates 2019/20
• National Under 18 Cup Entry Process & Dates
• Electronic Match Card Training Sessions Sign Up

Girls Cup Competitions Entry Process & Round Dates 2019/20

After successful competitions last season at both Under 18 and Under 15, I am happy to announce that entries are now open for both competitions here. If you intend to enter at both age groups, then you will need to complete the survey twice. Please ensure that the survey is completed in its entirety.

Please be aware that there will not be a confirmation email upon completion.

In an effort to improve the competition, we have amended the early stages of the competition so that clubs will now compete across 4 regions as opposed to 6 areas. This removes the need for triangular semi-finals at both an area and national level, allowing for teams to play full matches throughout the entire competition. Teams will still be grouped locally in the pool stages in an attempt to minimise travel distance and times. There will now also be a regional quarter final round added in January as part of the new competition structure.

Please see below for the round dates:

Round 1                                        29^th September 2019

Round 2                                        10^th November 2019

Round 3                                        15^th December 2019

Regional Quarter Finals          12^th January 2020

Regional Semi-Finals               9^th February 2020

Regional Final                             15^th March 2020

National Semi-Final                  5^th April 2020

Final                                               3^rd May 2020

The deadline for entries is Friday 19^th July at 5PM.

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected] or Simon Cruise [email protected] directly.

National Under 18 Cup Entry Process & Dates

Entries for the 2019/20 National Under 18 Cup competition are now open. To enter, please complete this survey in its entirety.

Please be aware that there will not be a confirmation email upon completion.

Entries are once again capped at 128 teams and priority will be given to the first 128 entries, but consideration will also be given to geographic spread, history in the competition and suitability for the competition.

Before you complete the entry form, please look at the dates below and confirm you will be able to fulfil fixtures on these dates. They are the dates set in the National Competition Calendar and there will be very little flexibility on when fixtures can be played. If your local competition organiser has scheduled fixtures for a round date, please raise with them. National Cup fixtures will need to take priority.

Round 1                                        19^th/20^th October 2019

Round 2                                        16^th/17^th November 2019

Round 3                                        18^th/19^th January 2020

Round 4                                        8^th/9^th February 2020

Round 5                                        14^th/15^th March 2020

Semi-Final                                    28^th/29^th April 2020

Final                                               2^nd/3^rd May 2020

The deadline for entries is Friday 19th July at 5pm.

Please be aware that in this competition we will be making use of Electronic Match Cards (EMCs), please ensure that someone involved with the U18s team is a Match Card Administrator on GMS so that they can fill in the EMCs. Support materials on EMC can be found here at the bottom of the page.

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] or Simon Cruise [email protected] directly.

Electronic Match Card Training Sessions Sign Up

This email has been sent to club Honorary Secretaries. Please forward to those within your club who manage teams and will be your Match Card Administrators (MCAs) for the upcoming season.

After a successful rollout to Level 8 of the Men’s game and its introduction into the women’s game, Electronic Match Cards (EMCs) will now be rolled out to Level 12 in the men’s game and Level 6 in the women’s game. In support of this we will be running training sessions across the country to help teams become more confident using the system as MCAs.

The dates and locations for the training sessions are below:

30^th July 2019                              Blaydon

30^th July 2019                              Launceston

31^st July 2019                               Wetherby

31^st July 2019                              Salisbury

1^st August 2019                          Wigan

1^st August 2019                          North Bristol

6^th August 2019                          Silhillians

6^th August 2019                          Cambridge

7^th August 2019                          Wellingborough

7^th August 2019                          Tunbridge Wells

8^th August 2019                          Newark

8th August 2019                         Twickenham

All sessions will be a 6:30pm meet for 7pm start until around 9pm.

Priority will be given to those from a men’s level 9 or below team and all women’s team. However, if there is space then we will accommodate attendees from other clubs, whether they are new MCAs or wish to have a refresher.

Signup Details: Please fill in the sign-up form here. Please be aware that there will not be a confirmation email upon completion.

If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact [email protected]

The England Counties Under 20 have returned from a successful tour of Romania. The Team played and won the two tests in Romania against an Under ‘23’ team, 22-7 and 44-21 respectively. Two players from NLD were selected, Luke Bouchier played in both Tests, Dan Lamb in the first, picking up a shoulder injury which meant he couldn’t play in the second.

The Under 20 Squad was selected from the four divisions, 8 players from the North 11 London and Southeast, 4 from the Midlands, and 1 from the Southwest. The Midlands U20 supplied 3 players, including Luke Sharpley of Oundle, and Ollie Killgallon (Loughborough University), who was captain in the second test.

Karl DeGroot, NLD and Manager of the Midlands, reported, “The NLD players and the Midlands squad produced competitive performances at the selection matches but were unable to come out on top, firstly against the North and then a strong London and Southeast Division which was reflected in the overall selection of the England squad

The overall programme was delivered to a high standard and in a very professional manner. We were able to get selectors to every CB game which was a huge positive and we are looking forward to next seasons campaign.”

Chris Brookes, NLD and England Manager was impressed with the NLD and Midlands players on tour. “It a huge honour for me to represent our CB in the England Program; the players are quite rightly extremely proud to be selected from such a high number of players, and it’s extra special for me when my home CB produces young players of such a high standard to wear the Red Rose. Both Dan and Luke were a credit to the Club, CB, and families whilst on tour to Romania.”

The Under 20’s Counties is available to any player below Level 2. This next season, there is no England Students programme and we will hopefully see more players in the NLD selection program pushing for Midland and England honours.

Next season the Counties U20 Tour Georgia. Chris said, “This will be the second visit to Georgia. I was lucky enough to manage the tour two seasons ago, and what a fantastic place and experience it is, and will be, for players that get selected. It truly is a rugby-mad, passionate place. This will be my last Tour for England as my term is in its fourth and final year, and it will fantastic if we can get more of our NLD players on the plane. With there being no students program next season, I really hope that we can see all of the Under 20 talent from our Clubs and Universities producing a fantastic NLD squad to play in the Jason Leonard Under 20 Championship.

For the Midlands League Tree for the 2019-20 please click the following link: Leagues Tree 19-20

NLD is pleased to announce the appointment of Emma Sanders as the Medical Support Co-ordinator following consultation with the Head of Game Development and the Head of Representative Rugby, together with age group Managers and Head of Competitions across the CB.

The new role was created to ensure that the CB has a constantly updated database which will provide stakeholders across the age ranges with ‘live’ information regarding the availability of suitably qualified medical support staff for representative matches as well as Festivals.

Managing our medical support resources will help ensure that Clubs and Representative age groups have access to staff with the required qualifications which should help to avoid the possibility of cancellations of matches and Festivals in the future.

The post-holder will establish more widespread contacts within the sports physiotherapy community as well as reaching out to local Universities in order to develop a network of qualified staff who can be called on to support the CB across the age ranges.

Emma is a qualified Sports Rehabilitator and has worked with Nottingham Rugby Club together with Newark RFC over the last two years and has had regular regular involvement with NLD Representative sides over the past season. She is a Level 3 ICIS qualified pitch side medic and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this important aspect of providing consistent levels of appropriate pitch side cover.

She will report directly to the Head of Game Development and we wish Emma a successful and enjoyable experience working within the NLD structure.

Lee Slack

Please find attached the draw for the initial rounds of the knockouts.

Play on dates for all rounds are;

R1: Sat 31st August 2019 (this may be played on Sat 7th September if both clubs mutually agree)

QF: Sat 30th November 2019

SF: Sat 25th January 2020

Finals: Sat 25th April 2020.

Match cards and regulations for the competition can be found on the NLD website. Clubs are reminded that it is their responsibility to be aware of and to comply with these.

Cup QF

Shield Round 1

Plate Round 1

Vase Round 1

The NLD age-grade calendar for the 2019-20 season can now be viewed here.

Details of the vacancies for General Manager and Press & Marketing Officer at Nottingham Rugby can be found by following these links.

https://www.nottinghamrugby.co.uk/vacancy-general-manager

https://www.nottinghamrugby.co.uk/vacancy-press-marketing-and-operations-officer

There has been some interest expressed by various clubs in entering their 2^nd/3^rd XVs as well as their 1^st XV in the NLD knockout competitions. To that end the Competitions Committee are looking at introducing a knockout competition for these teams for the season 2019-2020.

To gauge the support for this clubs are asked to express whether they would support this competition and which of their teams they would like to be included.

Replies are needed to the Senior Competitions Secretary (Dave Miller) at [email protected] by 30^th June. Based on these replies the Competitions Committee will then decide whether the tournament is viable and whether to proceed or not.

Community Game Update: May 2019

June 2019 Community Game Update contains important information on the following:

• Communicating with the RFU
• Deadline for Declaring Player Payments – Sunday 30 June
• The RFU launches its Transgender Policy
• Game On regulations start next season
• Injury surveillance in youth and men’s community game
• Introducing the new Stats Centre
• Changes to Facility Grants
• Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC)
• NatWest Rugby Force weekend 22nd – 23rd June
• O2 Touch & Secure Trading Sevens Series Finals – 29th-30th June 2019

Communicating with the RFU

We wanted to update you on some recent changes that we’ve made within our communications team.

Having joined the RFU in 2014, Gareth Mills is Head of Communications and is tasked with delivering an effective multi-channel communications programme. Vee Montebello joined the team in May to support the Community Game communications programme.

The communications team is keen to hear from you about activities taking place in your area and can advise or help in generating media coverage or coverage on England Rugby’s digital channels, where possible. This might be an up and coming festival, a successful charity event or someone in your community game who has done something that you want to highlight.

Vee is your first point of contact for such activities at [email protected]. In addition, Joe Ogden promotes the community game through England Rugby’s website and social media channels through written and video content. He is always on the lookout for stories in the game from inspiring players, coaches, volunteers and teams that display rugby’s core values. Contact Joe at [email protected].

You can also send suggestions for the monthly digital Touchline, which has more than 50,000 subscribers, to [email protected]. Touchline usually goes out in the second week of every month.

Our aim is to work with you to grow and promote the community game.

Deadline for Declaring Player Payments – Sunday 30 June

With less than a month to go until the deadline for submission of Payment of Player declarations, mandatory under RFU Regulation 7, please note that Sunday 30 June is the final deadline for submissions.

The requirement came in to force on Wednesday 1 August 2018 for the 2018-19 season for all clubs (Level 3 and below) wishing to be eligible for RFU benefits. The declaration covers the period of Friday 1 June 2018 – Friday 31 May 2019.

A list of FAQs can be found here and a guide on how to submit your declaration can be downloaded from here, including how to check that you have completed your submission.

For any queries around Payment of Players, please contact [email protected].

The RFU launches its Transgender Policy

The RFU issued its Transgender Policy in May. With core values of Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship at the heart of what we do and how we play rugby, the RFU aims to promote equal opportunities so that anyone wanting to play the game can do so without encountering prejudice.

As the national governing body for rugby union in England, the RFU is responsible for regulating training and playing to promote the safety and equitable treatment of everyone taking part.

The new Transgender Policy provides a clear framework to enable transgender and non-binary gender players to participate in rugby and the eligibility requirements mirror those of the World Rugby and International Olympic Committee policies.

Rugby is a sport for all and any harassment or discrimination will not be tolerated and will be dealt with in accordance with RFU Regulations.

Game On regulations start next season

As communicated in the May edition of Community Game Update, in order to provide clubs with more flexibility and options to play more matches, ‘Game On’ regulations will be introduced in the 2019-20 season and included in RFU Adult Playing Regulations for all friendly matches and competitions outside the men’s and women’s RFU English Club Championships.

In brief, a club has a number of options available for each match from ‘Game On’ regulations, i.e. the size of a team, length of a match, use of rolling subs and the style of line-outs and scrums. ‘Half Game’ regulations can also be utilised.

Watch out for more detailed information, which will be issued shortly, on englandrugby.com/GameOn and England Rugby social channels.

Injury surveillance in youth and men’s community game

As part of RugbySafe, ongoing research into the number and types of injuries sustained across school rugby and the men’s community game is being independently conducted by a team at the University of Bath.

The Youth Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (YRISP) has been running since 2013, while the men’s community rugby injury surveillance and prevention (CRISP) project has been running every season since 2009. The primary aim of both projects is to monitor the rates and types of injury at these levels of the game, while asking additional questions about causes of injury and what measures can be put in place to reduce the risk.

Work from the projects showed that specific warm-up programmes could help to reduce concussion and lower limb injuries. This has resulted in the Activate programme which is now freely available for anyone to access via the Activate webpage and use with their team.

The team are currently working on exciting new projects, using match video analysis to understand more about how match events differ between playing levels and which type of tackle characteristics are more likely to lead to injuries. There will also be a focus on how teams are using the Activate programme so that future guidelines and resources can be optimised. In the men’s community game, there will be a continued emphasis on understanding more about injuries sustained on Artificial Grass Pitches (AGPs) and natural grass surfaces.

Looking forward to season 2019-20, the YRISP and CRISP projects will continue to monitor the injury risk at different levels of the game from Schools U12 through to U18 age groups in both 15 and 7-a-side rugby and across all levels of the men’s community game. There are opportunities for teams at these levels to get involved in these research projects. By taking part, each team will be better able to track and understand their injury profile compared with the national average for teams at the same age or playing level and will receive a “supporting the RFU to put player welfare at the heart of the game” logo to display on the school/club website.

If you are interested in these projects and would like your team to take part, the research team would be happy to explain more.

Results and resources related to the projects, including 2017-18 season reports are available on the RugbySafe webpage.

For further information, please contact Matt Hancock and Craig Barden: [email protected] regarding youths and Simon Roberts: [email protected] for men’s community.

As part of the RugbySafe campaign, the RFU has worked with leading mental health charity Mind to provide generic information and guidance on mental health which will be available from July onwards and can be accessed from the RugbySafe homepage.

Introducing the new Stats Centre

The Electronic Match Card (EMC) captures accurate information such as results, team line ups, try scorers, disciplinary information, etc. from matches at various levels of the men’s and women’s RFU English Club Championships. Following feedback from players and clubs, we have developed a tool called stats centre which can be used to generate interesting and engaging statistics for individual players, clubs/teams and leagues to compare, much like Strava does for cycling. This information is pulled from EMC.

Several pieces of research also told us that clubs and players enjoy seeing this kind of information, and we hope that surfacing this in an engaging way, including with comparison to professional players, will allow greater engagement with clubs and the game in general. In time, we will also explore great rugby stories and incentives and rewards that we may be able to offer for individual, team and club performances. You can see the stats centre here.

At present, for certain levels of the game, completion of some of the areas of EMC, which generates the data displayed in the stats centre, is not compulsory. However, we would encourage all players, team managers, club officials, Matchcard admins to explore the stats centre and give us feedback.

If this is seen as valuable for players, teams and clubs, then we would encourage completion of non-mandatory information in EMC to ensure we can enhance the stats centre for next season.

Changes to Facility Grants

Following the recent Business Planning Communication outlining the reductions in investment next season, the Helping Hand and Groundmatch grant schemes will not be distributed by the Rugby Football Foundation in 2019/20. Limited funds will still be available and clubs wishing to discuss their facility needs can contact either their RDO or Area Facilities Manager.

Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC)

The RFU can provide a referral to an expert for advice on CASCs – information on how your club can save money can be found here. If your club is looking for help and advice on CASCs, whether you are considering registering or looking to make better use of available tax advantages like gift aid, please contact Dave Stubley – Club Management and Volunteer Manager for a telephone referral [email protected] or phone07736722387.

NatWest Rugby Force weekend 22nd – 23rd June

594 rugby clubs across England have registered for NatWest RugbyForce 2019 weekend, which takes place on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd June. It promises to be another great event bringing the rugby family and local communities together.

This is a nationwide programme that helps grassroots rugby clubs up and down the country attract new members and become stronger and more sustainable for the future.

The clubs who won grants of £3,000, plus a host of other benefits and rewards, are:

• Bishop Auckland RUFC, County Durham
• Canterbury, Kent
• Combe Down RUFC, Bath
• Hackney RFC, East London
• North Walsham RFC, Norwich
• St Leonards RFC, Stafford

Legends from the game, including Maggie Alphonsi, Dylan Hartley, Jonathan Joseph and Phil Vickery, will be at one of the winning clubs over the course of the NatWest RugbyForce weekend.

Please help support your club by popping in to provide much needed hands-on support and help the clubs get ready for the start of the next season.

Please also send in your stories or photos to [email protected]. Discover more about NatWest Rugby Force here.

O2 Touch & Secure Trading Sevens Series Finals – 29th-30th June 2019

As part of the O2 Touch programme, a selection of lucky volunteers who help to run the programme across England were invited to the annual Twickenham Takeover. They enjoyed a fun-packed day which included O2 Touch sessions, training with former England player Ugo Monye and fitness influencer Tom Bliss, a behind the scenes tour of the changing rooms and a BBQ to make the most of the sunshine.

The next O2 Touch event takes place at The Bay, Nottingham on Sunday 30th June. The O2 Touch national tournament will round off a weekend of rugby festivities in Nottingham following the Secure Trading Sevens Series final on Saturday 29th June.

There’s still time for teams to sign up to the regional group stages of the Secure Trading Sevens Series to be in with a chance to be crowned National Champion and win HSBC Sevens hospitality tickets – discover more here. You can also enter your O2 Touch teams here using the code O2 Touch.