Steve Wells reports on Ely Tigers and the push to include more females in the sport.

The number of women playing rugby in the UK has risen over the last five years, but it is still not a sport that all girls and women get the opportunity to play.

At Ely Tigers we are keen to encourage women and girls to ‘have a go’ and see for themselves what rugby really is as a sport for girls and women.

We have a great team of coaches offering fun and friendly training sessions twice weekly, when the season starts in September.

Over the last two years, we have doubled the number of girls we have training with Ely Tigers and now have some fantastic ‘Girls’ Rugby’ shirts.

After a good season of training and finding our feet at the various Pitch Up and Play events with the Ely Tigers Girls we would love to encourage more girls to come and try rugby, so we might be able to enjoy the benefit of playing more competitive rugby with the ECRU Clusters.

We decided to run a three-week recruitment opportunity for girls to come along and have a go. No previous experience was needed 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 along who might be interested in rugby. On three evenings in June, we held one-hour long training sessions.

On the final Wednesday, after the training we had a social in the club house and offered the girls a chance to chat and share pizza together.

We had a number of girls come along for the free sessions, most of them are keen to return and get involved with the girls rugby at Ely Tigers.

We now have girls in U12, U14 and U16 age groups. As a club, we would love to see more girls being able to take part in rugby games.

If you know anyone who would like to try rugby or just come and see what we do then please come along to our training sessions. Training sessions in September are free to attend.

For further information please email: girls4rugbyelytigers@yahoo.com