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

[geemumsnet]

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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Well my PE teacher at school would beg to differ. They said girls were more at risk of damaging their chests if caught in a bad tackle/falling.

That seems unlikely to me, especially with the lowered height of tackles now. I’m yet to see an injury of that type.

Having said that, there is some suggestion women are at greater risk of certain injuries in football (ACL particularly I think, would have to check) - hopefully as women’s sport finally gets the increased attention it deserves so too will the investment in research to improve safety.

Yeah perhaps. I'm not against women in sport, I love football and really wanted to play rugby as a kid, but my teachers were set against it for girls.

There must have been some evidence in stopping us from playing.

I played full contact club rugby for 12 years and I’m currently breastfeeding my baby. No damage to my breasts - what a stupid misnomer.
Playing rugby did help me get over my horrendous eating disorder as I saw the value in different sized bodies and I saw that girls who looked skinny and fit in their clothes still had cellulite and lumps n bumps when we were in the showers.

To help girls get into rugby: promote the amazing friendships that it as a team sport provides. All my wedding guests came from uni and club rugby. I was a lonely child on the spectrum: found my tribe in rugby. Campaign against the myths that prevent families supporting girls in rugby. Promote the visibility of the women’s team in clubs by ensuring their representation on the board and their presence in the club in team photos on the walls and in newsletters and social media etc.

but my teachers were set against it for girls ... There must have been some evidence in stopping us from playing.
Blimey, you have a naïve faith in The System! They can invent all sorts of 'reasons' not to do things that they don't want to do.
But your stance is illogical. It's all the more reason to encourage females to get involved in female rugby; to have rules & regulations that evolve to suit their bodies and is not just an unthinking copy the male game.

Rugby is an incredibly body positive sport for girls in my experience as well - ours has an almost comical height discrepancy between our tallest and smallest player, but both put equal amounts of points on the board. The “bigger” girls have shown they can power through defences/not be easily pulled down, and our “skinny” girls that look like a strong wind could take them away make tackles the men’s firsts would be proud of. There really is a role for everyone.

I know I’ve posted excessively on this thread but I cannot wax lyrical enough about girls rugby 😆 I only wish I was brave enough to give it a try (but I am completely unfit and don’t like lying down in the mud!)

An aside on inclusivity as well - the women’s game at our club at least seems particularly gay-friendly and inclusive and as a parent of a gay teen it’s great to have somewhere she can go and be totally herself.

It's pretty shocking if my teachers lied to me for a weird reason. I was so passionate about playing too.

Isn’t there a law coming in to ban rugby? Too many head injuries or something..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13038485/amp/rugby-schools-brain-child-abuse.html

Normalizing rugby for girls as a school sport is a big one, I think. At my DDs school (mixed) they've played mixed touch rugby since Year 1 and that helped my DD and a few of her friends to want to join a club outside school.

Why would you want to encourage girls’ rugby?

I’d like to see it abolished for boys and girls. It’s really dangerous and there are lots of safer sports for girls to do. And boys - but some places unfortunately force boys to do it.

There are campaigns to stop it.

My daughter started playing at school, and has continued to enjoy rugby. She plays for the school, and likes the fact that it’s all girls together. There is a stereotype of what a rugby player should be, but my daughter is short and thin - she’s great at running through the opposition! The team play against other school teams and it creates a great camaraderie. She starting by playing tag rugby at primary school and likes the fact its a bit different to playing football or tennis.

Get Girlguiding involved. They could develop a rugby badge or something.

We took our Brownies to the local rugby club for a taster session, and a few of them signed up after that.

Get Girlguiding involved.
Noooo. Not unless it gets GG on the same page regarding sex / gender / safeguarding.

But that would be ace, if it did happen!

Well there is that, yes. ☹️

Help local clubs improve their facilities.

Old changing rooms, communal showers and toilets are so often cold, dirty and impractical.

More touch games to encourage participation.

My daughter is 9 and much smaller than some of the boys on her team. They are now doing contact but her coaches are sensitive to her size and get her to play scrum half! She also loves to have her hair styled like Fury from Gladiators!

Watch more women in rugby. Thankfully this is slowly becoming more common!

Offering it in schools.
More grassroots rugby.
Seeing it more on TV / media.

Friends of ours are big into rugby and we all watch the matches together. Daughters included!
We've had a few games in the park too - very casual - but great to play a mixed match for a bit of fun and to encourage the younger girls

This is interesting as I’ve got a year 6 who’s off to secondary in September- all the mixed schools and boys schools do rugby in year 7 at least for everyone (then for some it’s a choice from year 8 onwards) but none of the girls schools do rugby in PE. One offers it as an after school club (not the school dd is going to), none teach girls rugby in PE lessons.

Athletics, cricket, football and hockey both girls and boys are introduced to in normal PE in secondary, if girls “get into rugby” it needs parents to be interested and involved or for girls to want to stay after school and try it.

Rugby England might want to start there, if it’s on the curriculum for girls, you’ll find more who will enjoy enough to ask their parents to take them to clubs at weekends/evenings.

I'd encourage my daughter by showing by example and joining a ladies club - I so wanted to play football and rugby when I was at school - but only netball was on offer. I would even take a coaching course to try to run my own team eventually.

I don’t really want my son to be playing rugby never mind my daughter. Each to their own but I would t want it encouraged in schools.

Having it in schools is essential. DD did it for half a term in year 7 and I received a phonecall from her PE teacher about how much she was enjoying it and how good she was ( as good as you can be for 6 weeks) so I searched around for a club that night. Without that input from that PE teacher I would never have thought of it unless DD had asked.

The only thing that annoys me is the girls always get second best, if girls and boys are playing a match at a club at the same time boys will be on the first pitch. We went to the County cup finals a few weeks ago, boys final in the morning, then women's on the first pitch next to the club house and the girls on another field further back. They turned the music on full blast for the boys celebration party which was massively distracting and disrespectful for the women and girls still playing. DD is also autistic so any extra excessive noise makes it harder for her.

The best thing about rugby is the inclusivity of science every body shape is celebrated from the strong and sturdy in the scrum to the gazelle like runners. It's a true celebration of the female body in all its forms.

DDs been playing for three years and the worst injury she had was bent back fingers from a warm up that bruised, other than that other bruises have been a badge of honour.

The mentality of grass roots club committee members needs to change - our local club is still full of older generation men who don’t believe women/girls should play rugby and they are losing members rapidly - they no longer have a ladies team and no U18s either so no where for my daughter to go once she reaches that age (currently playing U14s); the club never supported the ladies - they didn’t even open the bar on the day of their last ever game which goes to show how little they think of women’s rugby.

How to make it more inclusive? Rugby England need to do training with the clubs and coaches on equality/misogyny, I know a lot of them are volunteers but that would help a lot with the attitudes to women/girls in sport.

DD and her friend had been playing rugby for years and moved up from tag to contact to find the coach didn't want them on his team as "girls are always shit at this" and would "ruin" his boys team and refused to let them take part properly. The club were useless at dealing with him so we found another club where DD is thriving, her friend however gave it up completely.

Its very telling that our new club is doing very well and has girls in all age groups while the old club is losing players and cant recruit.

As for the people talking about injuries - you cant sanitise every aspect of life and make it safe, i'd rather my kids were out getting exercise / muddy than sat in front of a screen. DD often has bumps but will get up and carry on which is building her confidence and resilience.