Building a legacy
The Rugby World Cup is coming to England in 2025. The RFU are aiming to link clubs with different partners to engage more women at rugby clubs. The Impact 25 team explain more about the work.
The Rugby World Cup Impact Programme, delivered by the RFU in partnership with DCMS & Sport England will see significant investment across the country.
It will provide substantial facility upgrades and the creation of greater opportunities for females across all levels of the game through its volunteer, coaching and participation programmes.
Rugby World Cup 2025 provides a once in a generation opportunity to accelerate the growth of the game for women and girls and achieve the RFU’s ambition to have 100,000 female players by 2027.
Building capacity and opportunities in the lead up to the tournament is vital to cater for the increased demand the tournament will deliver.
Connecting with the community
The RFU is working with NFWI (National Federation of Women’s Institute), Our Parks and This Woman Runs.
These partnerships will help to increase awareness of rugby clubs in the wider community, which in turn provides an opportunity for new audiences to access the sport.
They should also encourage a change in perceptions of rugby, by showcasing the many different ways to play and engage with the sport.
These partnerships should strengthen rugby clubs position as community hubs.
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is collaborating with the NFWI (National Federation of Women’s Institute) to promote rugby clubs as welcoming, inclusive spaces for women and use non-rugby activities to connect communities with the local club.
Rugby clubs are putting in place opportunities to engage effectively with the WI and their members.
This ranges from Walking Rugby sessions, gardening projects, hosting WI monthly meetings and cinema evenings, to name but a few of the ways they are connecting.
Our Parks is working to stablishing fitness sessions out of rugby clubs for local women. It was founded in 2014 to deliver free, group exercise classes, led by fully qualified instructors, in parks and outdoor spaces.
Their aim is to ensure that easy access to exercise is available for all in the local community with an aspiration to create fitter communities through the utilisation of local facilities.
Our Parks uses bespoke technology to enable people to book onto classes and offers a wide variety of different exercise classes.
This Woman Runs is a safe, zero pressure running community for women to connect, meet up, chat, laugh, share challenges, celebrate achievements, cheer each other on and run together.
Their vision is to empower more women and girls to be more active, more often, for life.
Their work in the sporting sector has helped them to develop a deep understanding of the many obstacles preventing women from being active at various stages of their lives, and they are committed to overcoming these and building a community where all women feel that they can belong.
This Woman Runs connects women with other like-minded women, both online and in-person, for organised weekly runs plus friendship and support.
Runs are fun and inclusive, led by trained volunteers and they're free.
We will measure success from the partnerships by
Number of women engaged.
Participant Surveys detailing perception change and wider benefits from project i.e. community feel and health benefits
Sustainability and wider benefits community engagement is having.
If clubs are wanting to establish partnerships outside of their club they should first get an understanding of their local community.
Then establish which partners are local, and strategise how they can utilise their space/facilities to welcome the local community in.
Clubs can also take a look at our resources that we’ve built purposefully for community engagement.
Thoughts from Jess on building partnerships and connections with the local community
Identify different organisations that operate within your community
Assess the spaces you have within your club (indoor and outdoor), to think about how you could use them
Approach organisations to host taster nights (for example: could a local rounders team host a taster session at your club and you could host a rugby session for the rounders club)
Could you run a family fun day at the club? Send out invites to different community hubs (GPs, village halls etc)
Find out more about Our Parks
Find out more about This Woman Runs
Find out more about NFWI