Rochdale Mayfield and Heywood schools host first tag rugby festival of the year

Heywood schools at Rochdale Mayfield

As part of the club's successful Building the Future programmes, Rochdale Mayfield ARLFC has recently provided 80 children of six Heywood primary schools an opportunity to showcase their talents. The children took part in a tournament at Mayfield Sports Centre to compete for the first of many prestigious Barry Edwards trophies.

The club continues to promote and encourage young children into the sport to ensure player participation increases year on year.

Rugby league is a relatively niche sport within schools of the borough, and through various funding initiatives, Mayfield has been able to target and regain lost links with the future stars of the sport at no cost to schools.

Solid foundations have been created since the Building the Future programme was established in April 2023 as club coaches to date have visited 26 schools to coach over 2,000 children and provided 300 hours of opportunities to learn and partake in a sport that children might not normally get to experience.
 

Read more: Mayfield’s ‘Building the Future’ school programme now in full flowPublished: 16 May 2023

The programme has been very successful and 25 children who have participated in one of the programmes, have now taken up the sport and joined a team at Mayfield.

Rochdale Mayfield vice chairman and development officer Carl Abraham said: "We’re absolutely delighted with the number of schools that have taken up the offer and we would like to pay tribute to them for supporting and giving us the opportunity to provide your students with hopefully an experience to remember.

"It’s been an amazing 12 months that showcases the excellent work we are doing in the community and demonstrated the power of partnership that has enabled our programmes to be a massive success.

"Without each other these programmes wouldn’t happen and we now look forward to continuing our work and hopefully getting even more schools on board with future programmes and festivals that we have in the pipeline.

"The club is very proud of what its created but it’s not planning on resting on its laurels - its work in the community is here for the long haul. The club wants to see how far it can take all of its programmes and already have schools committed to programmes taking place in 2025."