Congratulations to our Women’s Rugby team who were recently awarded the ‘Rugby For All’ award by England Rugby at the University Rugby Awards 2022/23 for their “commitment to increasing equality, diversity and inclusion in the university game.”
We sat down with the team’s committee to find out more about their efforts to make rugby more inclusive and understand how they plan to continue to make rugby more inclusive.
1. Congratulations! How does it feel to have won the award?
It’s a bit surreal, we did a lot of work around inclusion, neurodiversity, and transgender rights throughout the year. It was the right thing to do - we wanted to make the club as inclusive and welcoming as possible so everyone felt like the club could be part of their university experience.
We started getting recognition from other clubs were amazed that people were noticing what we’d done and wanted to do something similar. It has had a butterfly effect amongst the clubs which is really cool! To be nationally recognised by England Rugby is incredible. We were the only female rugby club represented on the day at the awards. It felt was important to us to help break down the traditional perception that men’s rugby is more important than women’s rugby. Behind all our work, our coach has been great in supporting our work and everything we believe in. We’re incredibly lucky to have him.
2. So, building on that culture, how important do you think that equality, diversity, and inclusion are within rugby?
So important. It doesn’t matter if you’re tall or small, fast, or strong as there is a good position for everyone in rugby and that’s what makes it so inclusive. We’re kind of re-branding the game - we want to break down barriers and show that it can be for anyone.
A lot of our members were quite hesitant to join at first as there are all these preconceptions around rugby being quite violent, burly, and an alcohol-focused sport. For some of our neuro-diverse members, it was their first chance to play in a team sport environment, so it was important to be supportive and aware of their needs.
We’ve seen people grow and make new friends while having fun. Rugby has helped us personally, we feel happier about who we are, how we present ourselves to the world and we often care less about what others think – we just want to make some big, heavy contact.
3. What inspired you to go about and increase equality, diversity, and inclusion within your club?
We recognised that some of our club traditions didn’t suit our truly diverse members. By understanding our members, their backgrounds, and needs we were able to think about how we could give them the best University rugby experience possible. Part of this drive came from our personal connection with a player who had been directly affected and hurt by the transgender ban in rugby.
4. How did you increase equality, diversity, and inclusion?
For our LGBTQ+ members, we removed gendered language. For example, within our buddy system we changed the language from ‘old girls’ and ‘new girls’ to ‘freshers’ and ‘returners’ to ensure our gender-diverse individuals didn’t need to have awkward conversations about their pronouns or identity. It really opened our eyes to how gendered everything can be- we might be a women’s rugby club but anyone who identifies outside of being a cis-gendered woman is automatically included.
Our ‘Rainbow Laces’ campaign focused on trans rights. Most of our players wore at least one trans lace on their boots and could choose whatever other flag they wanted to represent on the other lace. It enabled our players to show who they are and that they’re still great rugby players whilst advocating for transgender women to be on the pitch - they’re currently banned from being with us. By setting this example, we have made our inclusivity and accessibility standards a non-negotiable part of our club.
We also implemented a feedback form, for members to give anonymous feedback on any aspect of the club including training, matches, socials and charity events etc. Using this we made improvements including offering socials that don’t revolve around drinking and are more sensory-friendly. Our captain also ran extra training sessions outside of allocated training times, for anyone to touch up on their rugby skills.
5. How are you going to encourage future members to carry on the work that you’ve done?
By setting a good example and making inclusivity an integral part of our club, we’ve already done a lot. We can see that when our newly elected committee all demonstrated in their campaigns their commitment to our club’s inclusive values and we hope they will continue the legacy of inclusivity, lead with patience and care for everyone.
We hope the award inspires other University clubs to implement the changes we have so that everyone everywhere knows they can participate in sports. We are seeing other teams adopting some of our changes - the Cheer team have changed some of their language to be more gender-neutral which is great. We hope in 10 years’ time every rugby club, every sports club is like this because being part of this team and winning this award is just amazing!