Why England Touch partnership should be good news for the RFL

James Warrener, founder of Yaxley Yaks and as big a rugby league fan as he is a Touch player, recently wrote an article for Forty20 magazine in the wake of England Touch’s partnership announcement with the RFL. A full version is in the magazine itself.

There has been a lot of speculation in this publication [Forty20 magazine] recently regarding possible infiltration in the northern hemisphere game by the NRL.

The recently announced partnership between England Touch and the Rugby Football League isn’t quite what was speculated but is an interesting development nonetheless. It could also have cross hemisphere implications.

The background to this story is that Touch has been run by two bodies (in essence) for a number of years.

England Touch is part of the international Federation. The Rugby Football Union also had their O2 touch programmewhich ran to the same laws but had central funding from Twickenham, which my own club, Yaxley Yaks benefitted from at startup.

However the O2 partnership ended in September and the RFU created a completely new set of laws including a number of union specific pieces of gameplay, called ‘Touch Union’.

There were a lot of teams and clubs that were embedded within a union set up (especially down here in the south) that were suddenly faced with the choice of sticking with the game they knew, or change to the new set up.

The Yaks are now part of a bigger partnership where smaller teams (like Yaks) across Peterborough come together in an internal competition at Peterborough Rugby Club before the best players are selected to represent the overall club at regional and national competitions.

Against that backdrop England Touch released the news in the run up to Christmas that they were now partnering with the RFL to “grow oval ball sports”.

The press release says all of the right things. It mentions the heritage of the sport, with pre-season training at South Sydney Rabbitohs the birth and development hub of touch, along with mentioning high profile players in league that have come through our game.

Shaun Johnson, Ryan Papenhuyzen and Kaylan Ponga are players all of us over 45’s try to emulate on a weekly basis in training.

The partnership is already seeing Touch clubs and Super League clubs in both Wigan and Leeds get together and with the amount of references to the NRL Touch Premiership in the press release that is clearly to long term aim.

Peterborough Touch Rugby’s Max Raymond told me: “The recently announced partnership between the RFL and England Touch is a hugely exciting opportunity for Touch Rugby clubs across the country. While many Touch clubs in the North already enjoy a close link or have formed from the RFL community, clubs across the country will now see this as an opportunity to partner with League clubs in their area to the benefit for both codes”

My hope is that Touch will become embedded in the game in the way we have seen curtain raising events at Newcastle Magic Weekends in the past. If the RFL would like someone on the ground, playing and promoting touch to speak to, get in contact with me. I have some ideas!

This article has been reproduced with the kind permission of James and the editors of Forty20 magazine, which is available in good newsagents and online via www.scratchingshedpublishing.com/magazine/