Army Corps rugby returns and local teams welcome matches
The Army Rugby Union Corps season’s traditional curtain raiser in Aldershot saw representative rugby back with a bang, and Director of Community Rugby Maj Marc Wilding convinced that the sport is undergoing a resurgence of interest.
The Adjutant General’s Corps won the Women’s Sevens and the Royal Logistic Corps, Infantry and Intelligence Corps won the Men’s League 1, 2 and 3 XVs tournaments respectively. Hundreds of players from across the country were at the home of Army Rugby to lay down a marker before the Corps season started in earnest.
Marc was delighted to see the units return to rugby after the lockdowns, which gave Army community rugby a chance to plan and adapt.
“We’ve trickled a few Unit games in over the summer, and we are in a good place,” he said. “The sevens went really well, we managed to get games played under adaptive laws before summer leave, and at the Corps festival we had hundreds playing at a high level, so it’s really positive.
“We don’t have to play traditional 15-a-side rugby. If we don’t have a front row, we can play adaptive laws and lean on in the scrum without pushing or have a free kick.
“If we can bring more people to the game, we can then develop them to be technically safe and have proper scrums in the future. That’s a nice challenge for us, rather than scrambling around trying to find enough players.”
Engaging with civilian teams
Army rugby has also been engaging with local civilian teams, and Marc is hoping that this continues, especially in the women’s game.
“The Griffins in Andover played two or three teams in their local community and others have done something similar,” he says. “The good thing post-pandemic is that civilian clubs are also seeing the value in it.
“I want to carry that forward with our own women’s Super Series. With somewhere like Abingdon, who only have Lyneham in Wiltshire relatively close to them, we’ll look for local teams in Oxfordshire down to Wiltshire who have women’s sections to have matches and give all of them regular rugby.”
The Corps festival was a popular event. And says Marc: “It’s our first level of representative rugby. Corps coaches only see their players for very short periods before the season starts in earnest. For this season, where we’ve brought in structured promotion and relegation, it was all the more important to hit the ground running.”
And with the Adjutant General’s Corps and the Gunners having reached the Women’s Sevens final, he says: “The Royal Logistics have dominated women’s rugby over the last three or four years, so having new teams in the final shows that when you invest in it you reap dividends.
“Around three years ago the Gunners team was driven really well by a smaller command team who then moved on, and the rugby dropped off a bit. It’s great to see them back. Maj Euan Murray is driving women’s rugby and there’s a real opportunity for Gunners rugby to progress now that there are so many Units in Larkhill.”
