THE HERALD REPORTS

Wising up to rugby on the street
KAREN GILES July 01 2009
Kenny Hodgart

c The lack of Scottish Rugby hardware and branding hasn't prevented a posse of youngsters - many of them in Celtic or Rangers kits - descending on the grass behind Halgreen Avenue, however. The main draw is undoubtedly the mammoth presence of Dougie Hall, the Scotland and Glasgow Warriors hooker, who, when your Herald reporter arrives, is being battered by wave after wave of rampaging boys, albeit from behind the safety of a tackle shield.

Welcome to Street Rugby, an initiative that is being rolled out around some of Scotland's most disadvantaged areas all this year. With the help of funding from the Scottish Government's Cashback for Communities scheme - essentially cash redirected from the proceeds of crime - it is part of a strategy that Scottish Rugby hopes will take the game out of its heartlands and increase overall participation.

All Street Rugby involves is SRU personnel turning up in a neighbourhood and getting boys - and girls - to kick, throw and chase a rugby ball about. The venue can be either a designated sports facility or simply a street or car park and, to begin with at least, it's non-contact and with no rules about passing forward and the like. Participants may be drip-fed technical instruction on tackling or passing but the very basic, and laudable, aim is to offer those who have never played rugby an introduction to it.

The dozen or so boys, aged between about seven and 15, who pitched up at Drumchapel's very first Street Rugby session on Friday night, were certainly new to the sport. "It's two-wan tae us, big chief," is how one of the oldest kept Glasgow's Rugby Development Officer, Ross Aitken, informed of the score. Hall, though, was philosophical, and magnificently candid, about rugby's relationship to football, as well as the transformative potential of schemes like Street Rugby.

"I started off playing football, but not everyone can be good at football, especially if you're built like I was," he said. "There's the old cliché of sticking the fat kid in goals, if you'll excuse the phrase, but whereas you might be the fat kid in football you're probably half-decent at rugby. Self-esteem is a huge thing for youngsters, so if for no other reason it's worthwhile getting into rugby to develop a bit of confidence in yourself.

"I only started playing rugby at secondary school - before that it was all football, football, football. When I went to secondary school rugby was the big thing so it was a case of okay, I want to make friends'. It's a sad fact that in a lot of schools you tend to find it's football or nothing."

The boys in their football gear in Drumchapel seem whippet-thin rather than brawny or bulky, but there is little doubting that the rough and tumble of rugby teaches one a thing or two about taking knocks and getting back up. "We start off with touch rugby - usually we're on concrete - but that'll usually end up with them practically tackling each other anyway," said Aitken. "We then get them running into the tackle shields so that they experience the contact side of things and aren't afraid of it. People think they're going to get hurt playing rugby without actually having tried it, so it's good to challenge those preconceptions."

Part-employed by Culture and Sport Glasgow and part by the SRU, it is Aitken's job to nurture youth rugby in Glasgow, whether through school programmes, club development or community schemes like this. "Ultimately the aim is to increase participation in rugby at club or school level," he says. "With Street Rugby it's a case of going back every three or four weeks and trying to spark an initial interest. After a few sessions we'll look to promote the nearest rugby club, in this case Glasgow Hawks."

Cashback money has massively boosted investment in community rugby coaching and development over the last year or so. By 2011, the SRU hope to have involved a total of 12,000 youngsters in Street Rugby, complementing a simultaneous drive to provide more rugby sessions in schools. Already it is claimed that since Scottish Rugby's restructuring in 2006, the number of young people playing contact rugby in Scotland has risen by about 24%. It should be remembered, though, that we are starting from a pretty low base: according to International Rugby Board figures, where participation in rugby in Scotland and Ireland used to be roughly on a par, we now only have a third of the players Ireland does.

Street Rugby recently received a cross-party commendation in the Scottish parliament, but clearly now is not the time to get complacent. Dougie Hall said: "Hopefully this will be sustained and built on. There's no point in just holding a handful of sessions and not following them up. We can say to kids to play rugby among themselves - you don't necessarily need a rugby ball to play the kind of rugby we've been playing here - but once we spark the interest it's up to them individually to decide whether they want to go along to a club or say to their PE teacher that they want to play rugby."

Countless biographies of sportsmen relate how boxing or football or basketball have offered a means of transcending social background.

It would surely be to the enrichment of rugby in Scotland if it emulated that tradition in the 21st century.

This article was posted on 2-Jul-2009, 07:29 by Hugh Barrow.