Share your tips and tricks for getting your daughters involved in Rugby - £200 voucher to be won

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Have you ever considered introducing your daughter to rugby? Whether it's finding the right club, tackling stereotypes, or boosting confidence on the field, we want you to share your tips and tricks for encouraging your daughters to get more involved. Additionally, how do you think we can make the sport more inclusive? Share your thoughts!

Share your tips and tricks below for encouraging your daughters to get involved in rugby and your thoughts on how we can make Rugby more inclusive.

One lucky MNer will win a £200 voucher for a store of their choice!

Here is what England Rugby has to say:

“The girls’ game is growing fast. The success of England’s Red Roses has increased the visibility of the game and when England hosts the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2025, there will be even more of a spotlight on women and girls in the sport.
Research from Women in Sport found that young girls are surrounded by expectations and stereotypes that negatively affect how they view and experience sport. By the time they are teenagers, many girls have decided that they do not ‘belong’ in sport.
England Rugby are tackling this head on and have launched the Love Rugby initiative to support girls to see and feel that rugby is a place where they can thrive.
There are so many benefits associated with playing rugby for both boys and girls; the sport really is for everyone.

To find your local rugby club or more information about age grade rugby, visit Find Rugby or the England Rugby website.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

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Take them to a grass routes club - ours is very friendly, and has a growing girls team albeit small in numbers - if we all encouraged this - the game would flourish.

Share your tips and tricks below for encouraging your daughters to get involved in rugby any sport
By ensuring that the female version of the game stays female. Mixed is fine in mini and juniors but, after that, no male bodies in female sports. Fairness and safety is more important than "inclusion".
Well done RFU in sticking up for women's sport.

Encourage your school to have a girls rugby or football team - if they don't get governors on board with this, get your local rugby club to come into school and encourage girls to take part, get them watching womens rugby on the TV and see the sheer joy in their faces !

Definitely more grass-roots opportunities!

Take them along to local groups from a young age when it's still tag rugby and the physical differences in sexes aren't apparent.

Then, gently but consistently remind the bloody coaches that 'kids' or 'team' is their go to name for the children and to stop using the word 'boys'!!!

Also, take your daughter to watch women's rugby, put it in the telly, celebrate the women's team's wins etc, make it normal, make it part of the conversation.

Female role models are huge. If there's a women's team in a local club, get them involved with the coaching for the underage teams.

A lot of teenage girls are put off by white shorts due to periods. Our team adopted navy shorts as have the Irish national women's team. They look great and it can make a huge difference to awkward teenage girls. This has been evidenced in research and I've seen it in practice myself. Navy or black are fine. White shorts are just a nightmare to wash anyway yet they're so popular!

Normalising it for first aid kits to have period products and normalising it for coaches to be comfortable in telling the girls if they needed products to help themselves. Having female coaches or volunteers also helps with this.

Having access to period products in the clubhouse toilets too is also really positive.

Coaches need to remember that girls usually take up rugby at a later age than boys (because the opportunities aren't there which in 2024 they should be!) so they need to be mindful of that when coaching. With more patience and understanding that girls might take longer to learn the laws and terms. Boys who have been playing since they could walk have a huge advantage in knowing this stuff and it's noticeable.

Tag or tip rugby is always a good way of getting any kid into rugby initially.

Our club did summer camps specially for girls of various ages to get them into it. We also did fun tag for mums (and other women) which often led to them joining the women's team which both improves women's access to sport as well as giving the girls role models to follow.

There also needs to be a focus on promoting grass routes women's rugby usually with a more social element as this is often neglected even by very established clubs.

Mixed gender summer tag with BBQs and award nights is also a good way of promoting rugby of all types to all genders.

I was very involved with promoting women's rugby in our local club and by extension the underage girls too.

My daughter agreed to try it if I agreed to coach, so I volunteered as a parent even though I knew nothing about rugby and thoroughly enjoyed it even in the worst of weathers! Better to be active than standing on the touch lines! We managed 2 years on a mixed team. She focused on her strengths which were speed and agility and channeled her determination into trying to win.

Check your local council website for clubs - and if there are none from girls rubgy - try your local facebook town group for local groups, they are popping up all over - and help the volunteers who run the group - show your daughters the Red Roses as sporting role models

The best way is for them to play it at school from a young age, to normalise rugby for girls. Mine loves tag rugby and they play often at school (boys and girls). Then it's a case of finding a local girls team. It's best for them to start early so they're less likely to want to quit in those early teen/preteen years.

Rugby Tots is a great starting point & gives kids the opportunity to start playing Rugby early! All sports are great, but to see more girls/women playing what have always been traditionally male sports is so wonderful!
I definitely felt that experience of not belonging in sport as a teenager, & I wonder if I had felt like rugby was something I could have a go at - maybe I would have been kinder to my body & seen the strength in my large thighs, rather than hating them!
Let's encourage our girls to give these things a go - let them see the impact women are having in rugby & what they could achieve is this is something they want to explore.
As with all sports - the benefits to confidence & physical & mental health go without saying :)

I’d love mine to do this, but I do worry about injuries. Is it as rough a game as I think?!

This!

It can be rough but the girls/women’s game is much more technical and clever than the brute force of the men’s game. My daughter is play top level rugby and has done for 8 years- she has been injured (ankle and knee) but no concussion as they focus on the correct technique and run for space rather than onto contact where the head injuries can often occur .

We have a big local team and buying her a top and a little toy mascot and taking her along to a match was a hugely exciting occasion for her. We have loved seeing it through her eyes!

More encouragement needs to be given to schools to include girls rugby in their PE curriculum.

I have 2 daughters and a son, they’ve been to 2 different high schools and although both offered rugby for boys, my girls could only do netball.

I don't have a daughter but one of my friend's daughters watched her big brother playing and asked if girls were allowed to play too and luckily there was a local club nearby that had a girls team, she when to watch and decided she would like to join too. So if you want your daughter to play, take her to watch a game.

If your daughter is anything like mine, the bruises become like a badge of honour!

Offering it in school is vital - mine hated any kind of team sport then did rugby for a term and it lit a fire in her so we took her down to a local club and she’s loved playing ever since.

Being Northern - rugby is in our blood ! Take you children to the matches, show them the family environment, buy a junior rugby ball and play in the garden, watch grass roots clubs, explain team playing, rules and respecting the ref, try and ask your team if they can be a mascot for the team - join a well run established team of young players.

check out your local council sports centres for rugby - buy a junior kit and rugby boots for playing in the garden with a mini rugby ball, show them the red roses how women can be strong - fair - team players and equal amongst men.

Agree with all the posts about the importance of getting rugby in schools.

And it is really down to luck whether you have a club that encourages girls from an early age.

Rather boringly... make sure girls have access to suitable toilets/ changing rooms. They don't have to be palatial, but there are too many grounds where the girls have to go the the loo or get changes in manky facilities.

At very young and grass roots level you can encourage girls by pointing out what particular skills rugby gives them. Most sporty girls who played rugby from 4+ at our club were also interested in other sports. So rather than just see them as Mini Rugby players, let them see how their training will help them in sports such as hockey, football, and lacrosse.

As an extension of this, each club should at least consider what sports they are completing with.
For example, see if there can be any wriggle room with negotiating clashes with other sporting fixtures.At our club, the kids at the upper sections of the Minis were offered one of two training sessions, which meant more of them could also do football. In the end, this meant that more kids who would have given up rugby actually ended up giving up football instead as they had longer to think about it.

I have found that rugby clubs tend to be more more family friendly and more inclusive than football. They are simply much nice places to hang out so if you can get them past the crunch time when they have to give up something you have a greater chance of keeping them.

Oh and keeping it female.

By celebrating the female nature of women's sport, you not only keep it fair and safe, you give girls an opportunity to see what they can do.

I partly agree with this and I partly don't.

Growing up I wanted to play rugby. I remember playing tag rugby and tbh it let out some of my competitiveness. It was actually the only way I dared challenge the bullies in my year group too, I was so soft as a child that I never dared fight back but I was so fast in rugby and often won people at sports so I loved it. I finally got to strike back haha.
I remember wishing I could play rugby like the boys. Properly. I asked a teacher if I could and they told me no, that boobs would get damaged more easily if we are all slamming into one another.

My nan also told me it's not for girls. It's not ladylike and too risky.

It not being “ladylike” is one of the things my daughter loves the most about it!

Also - you don’t tackle with your boobs so think you’re safe 😉