Sarah Hunter Gets Kids Into Rugby

Thursday 18th June 2009 - 10:43:14

Sarah Hunter decided from a very young age that she wanted to play rugby for England. At the age of twenty three she has done just that.

But now she is trying to get more girls into the sport and has become the ambassador for RFU Yazoo Tag Rugby.

I caught up with her to talk about her role and getting more girls into the sports as well as her career and what lies ahead for her.

- You are at the tag rugby festival today so what are you up to?

I'm just wandering around at the moment and watching the kids playing to see what the schools are like, I', also doing some question and answer sessions with the kids and letting them ask me things But it's just watching them enjoy themselves really.

- You are the RFU Yazoo Tag Rugby Ambassador so what does that involve and why did you get involved in the scheme?

It involves coming to events like this and, hoping, that they see me as a bit of a role model for them, especially in terms of the girls, and showing them where they can progress to and just going round today they are not sure where they can progress and what there is after this and that there is an international team out there alongside the men.

I got involved because I came to an event last year as a one off and saw the sort of games that were playing and saw how important that it was in the development of rugby players at such a young age to get them to learn the basics of passing and running and catching and the principles that we use to day at international level.

I got involved with the project because after two years of it running they had managed to get a million children playing tag rugby, which is fantastic, but 46% of those are girls and Mark Cueto is an ambassador as well and obviously the boys look up to him, the girls do as well but it's nice that the girls can actually see someone who has actually plays rugby as well and it's not just a male sport.

I think that it's such a brilliant opportunity for me to put something back into rugby because I have obviously got a lot out of it and to just promote women's sport, and sport in general, and to help children realise that they can have ambitions outside of playing sports in schools.

- And what do you hope that this scheme with ultimately achieve?

Ultimately I hope that increases the participation of rugby for both boys and girls and it's a way of getting children to interact and socialise with each other and other people because they are so often now on their Playstation of on the internet this get kids active and results in a healthy lifestyle for them.

- How difficult has it been to introduce girls to the sport and how difficult is it to get them to stick with it?

I think in the past it has been quite difficult but because tag rugby is a non-contact sport, and they are on a level playing field with the boys at this age, then in terms of getting them involved it's like any other sport and that's great because they can get active and really be part of a team.

The next stage, like you say, is to keep them involved in the sport and that is becoming a lot better now as there are greater links with clubs and women's are starting to have programmes put into the PE time that include rugby while there haven't been these links in the past there are those structures in place now.

Hopefully this will increase the levels of participation in the sport and get them to continue a sport that they enjoy, just walking around here today they are having such a brilliant time and you wouldn't even notice the difference between the boys and girls and some of them are out-sizing the boys which is really good to see.

- And how did you get involved with rugby yourself?

I started playing in primary school when I was nine, it wasn't as well organised in terms of national competition but we had a rugby coach come in for a four or five week period and introduce rugby into our PE lessons.