The Rugby Roadshow was back in town as the Imberhorne School Sports Co-ordinator, Steve Hill, continued to work in partnership with the East Grinstead Rugby Club to increase the profile of rugby throughout Year 7. The promising school to club link was evident as 8 Club coaches gave up their own time to engage all of the Year 7 girls and boys during a special curriculum time coaching session. Supported by Mr. Marshall, the East Grinstead Rugby Club took the students through a number of passing and handling drills. For some of the girls (pictured opposite, top), it would have been their first real taste of rugby. One of the key principles behind the day is to provide the children with an opportunity to play rugby and to meet some of the coaches from their local club.The day was in fact split into two sessions. A morning session at Sackville co-ordinated by Bernie Streeter and an afternoon session at Imberhorne School co-ordinated by Steve Hill who was instrumental in organising the event.Each coach was given a group to work with for an hour. They all started with a short warm up followed by some drill work, practicing some of the key skills required in competitive rugby. Running, passing and catching were emphasised throughout the drills and then put into a small fun game at the end of the session. Reinforcing the fact that Rugby is fundamentally a team game where each player has an important role to play.All the children responded well and seemed to have a lot of fun. Some children that had never played before were surprised to discover that having fun was a key element of the game. The essentials of enjoyment and teamwork are very much the emphasis of the regular weekly training sessions held at the Rugby ClubBoth the Junior and Intermediate chairmen from East Grinstead Rugby Club were there to hand out flyers and information about the club should any of the children want to add to their rugby experience.There have been several years of collaboration between the schools and the Rugby Club, resulting in annual events aimed at encouraging children to keep fit by taking part in sport.The Rugby Fayre is now an annual event which takes place in the autumn term with the year 7 (11yrs) children. There is also a TOPS festival that happens in the summer term aimed at the year 6 (10yrs) children from the local primary schools. This event is organised by Steve Hill and Bernie Streeter and part hosted by East Grinstead Rugby Club. The TOPS event is aimed at giving each child a chance to experience different sports and the opportunity to meet coaches from various local sports clubs.The Rugby Club has also added a day to its end of season sunshine sevens festival that will take place on the 24th to 26th April 2009. The opening event is now a schools tag festival which takes place on the Friday preceding the sunshine sevens weekend. All the local primary schools within the Sackville and Imberhorne schools catchment area are invited to take part.It is hoped that this liaison between the Rugby Club and the local schools will help encourage more children to take part in sport outside of school, to supplement the excellent work that already goes on within the schools.East Grinstead Rugby Club, Junior and Intermediate sections run teams from under six through to Colts at eighteen for both boys and girls. The Girls teams are helped by the Central Weald Dragons which is a club formed to help girls play rugby. The Central Weald Dragons provide an opportunity for girls to play competitive rugby whilst still remaining a member of their local club. They draw on players from Crawley, East Grinstead, Horsham and Burgess Hill Rugby clubs. More details can be found on their website www.centralwealddragons.co.ukEast Grinstead Rugby club has over thirty qualified coaches running the children’s teams. All coaches are CRB checked and are parent volunteers.The club has a strong history of coaching children right through to the senior teams as can be witnessed by the fact that many of our current first team players started their rugby careers in our junior teams.More information regarding Children’s rugby in East Grinstead can be found on the club website www.egrfc.com. The contact details for both David Hooker (Intermediate Chairman) and Anton White (Junior Chairman) can be found on the club website.