An interview with girl's rugby coach David McGuigan on the impacts of Covid-19, by Joseph Critchlow
The lockdown has put a stop to activities that many of us were unaware of how much good they did us in our everyday lives, something as simple as walking to school or down to the store can help us get out of the house for a bit of fresh air or allow for our bodies to stretch themselves out a bit after a long day spent sitting down. In the short time between the two lockdowns people were briefly allowed to enjoy outdoors activities once more and many began to take a greater notice of the sports made available to them.
One sport that got quite a bit of attention was the unfortunately long neglected women’s rugby (A sport that my sister has been doing for quite some time now) and in order to get a greater understanding of what challenges the sport faced, both from the virus and from mainstream rugby itself, I decided to interview the Head of Girls Rugby at old reigatians rugby club: David McGuigan.
The opinions are Mr. McGuigan's and do not represent Old Reigatian Rugby Club.
How was the club initially impacted by Covid-19?
The immediate impact of Covid on the club was to bring a very early finish to the 2019/20 season. For some sections this was a shame as there were still trophies and league places to play for, but thankfully it was not too dramatic. For the U15 Girls team the timing could have been much worse because they won the Surrey Girls Cup on the final day before lockdown.
However the much greater impact on the club has been financially because we had to close the bar / function room and cancel all of the bookings that were in place over the summer (Wedding Receptions, Parties, end-of-season celebrations etc). We are very fortunate to have a beautiful clubhouse which generates a good hire income and profit from the sale of alcohol and food, losing this has put a financial strain on the club.
We have done what we can to try and get some events and activity back in the clubhouse but the Covid restrictions make this very challenging and we are very restricted on the numbers that we are allowed inside,.
In addition, we are not allowed to use the changing rooms so as the winter draws nearer we will get lots of very cold and muddy children with nowhere to go to warm up.
What measures were put into place in order to make sure that it was safe to play rugby again?
Our governing body issued very extensive guidelines on what we are / are not allowed to do and we have had to ensure that we abide by these, as well as following the Public Health England / NHS guidance / Government guidance.
In general terms we have had quite severe restrictions on how many children could train together (initially it was only 5 plus a coach in a pod) but this has eased off slightly now. We have also needed to ensure that hands and rugby equipment are regularly sanitised and that the Girls do not congregate for a chat during breaks in the training sessions - quite a challenge as Lockdown has made it hard for them to stay in touch and they were desperate to catch up when rugby gradually returned.
We have also had to put in place careful monitoring of who was at each session, including parents, which has posed some interesting record keeping challenges.
However the biggest challenge has been the adaptations to the Laws of the game of rugby that we are allowed to play because of the restrictions on the amount of face-to-face exposure that the players are allowed to other players. We have therefore had Mohave regular coach briefing sessions to ensure that they all understand what is / what is not allowed.
Were there any positives that came from Covid?
Somewhat surprisingly there have been quite a few positives arising from Covid. Each Girls age-group is made up of two school years and traditionally at the start of a season there are some elements of friction between the two years (for example, in the U15’s the year 11’s have moved up to Under 18’s and so the Year 10’s have been joined by Year 9’s, who have moved up from Under 13’s). We started the girls back training in mid June in pods of just 6 but we mixed up the school years so that the girls had no choice but to get to know the younger / older girls in their age-group and this has been a huge success. As a result of this, the new age-groups have bonded much better and much more quickly than would normally be the case at the start of a season.
The coaching teams have risen fantastically well to the challenges of developing new socially distanced games for the girls to play which has been a great experience and has brought the entire girls coaching team (about 35 coaches) closer together.
In addition, our summer activities have usually revolved around Touch Rugby but the socially distanced games that we needed to introduce (as Touch was not allowed at the start of Covid) have actually been very beneficial for the skills of the Girls who have worked really hard on their skills (generally without realising it, because we had worked so well on developing the games that they were playing).
Overall what this means is that our summer preparations will never be the same again and going forward we will bring much greater variety to the activities that we run for the girls during the summer.
Do you believe that there's anything the government could be doing to help promote women's Rugby or does it even need that help?
This is a great question. It is also slightly complex because the Government does not run our sport, this is done by our governing body, the Rugby Football Union (RFU).
Women’s rugby is growing really well but it is doing so at a time when the men’s game is actually shrinking. This is a huge shame because it has meant that the focus of our governing body has been more on maintaining the mens game than would have been ideal. I completely understand the reasons behind what our governing body are doing but it is such a shame that there has not been as much focus on the female game as a sport that is growing so fast really merits.
So what could have been done - rugby is a contact sport and there will always be some injuries, but all of the data at the moment has been taken from the male game. The RFU are starting to address this and some studies are underway but this should have been started much earlier.
There are now injury prevention programmes in pace in rugby called ‘Activate’, but once again the data for this is based on the men / boys game and we do not know if this is necessarily right for the female side of rugby.
Women’s rugby has not been well funded by the RFU and indeed is still largely amateur, even partly at International level - I believe that some government funding would have helped the female game develop much more quickly and would have seen more youngsters taking the game up much faster than has been the case.
To what extent do you believe sexisim exists in the sport of Rugby?
Do I believe that there is still sexism in Rugby ? Sadly yes. As can be seen from my responses to question 4 above, the female side of the game has not been as well funded as many of us would have liked. Sadly Covid has exacerbated this because the funding that is available has dropped faster in the Female game. Whether this is sexism or realism is hard to tell (mens rugby generates more TV and attendance revenue) but the mens game is still receiving huge funding which I think is disproportionate based on the male / female numbers playing the sport and on the growth potential for women’s rugby.
Sadly sexism also persists within clubs who are largely run by older men who, on occasions, have some old-fashioned attitudes (the age gap occurs largely because older people have more time to dedicate to volunteering in the sport than younger people and the lack of women is often because there are not very many older women rugby players). This is beginning to change, and is doing so faster in some clubs than in others, but sadly it is still an issue and some clubs still refuse to entertain the idea of having female teams.
To conclude I think it’s excellent that so many people have found a respite from the events of 2020 in the world of rugby and hopefully many will pick up where they left off when the second lockdown comes to an end. However it is clear that while some progress has been made in the effort to make woman’s rugby equal to its male counterpart it’s not enough, and as all sports go into hibernation once more with a second lockdown coming into effect, we cannot allow for issues that affect woman’s rugby to fester under the surface and if pressure continues to be applied then women’s rugby may no longer simply be a side-gig to those who control the sport.
