Children at Swarcliffe Primary, Grimes Dyke Primary, Fieldhead Carr and Whinmoor St Pauls are benefitting from a Premier Rugby programme designed to help tackle the growing issue of childhood obesity, by playing and enjoying tag rugby.

Leeds Carnegie, one of the 12 Premiership clubs that make up Premier Rugby, are launching the Try Rugby campaign in Leeds.

The programme - which began at the start of October and runs throughout the course of the rugby season - has been developed and funded through a partnership between children's charity Wooden Spoon (Spoon), Premier Rugby and Sport England.

Today nearly a third (31.1 per cent) of 11-year-olds are overweight or obese and the number is rising.

Spoon believes that one route to tackle this is through exercise and is championing rugby as the perfect sport to do this as it can be played by boys and girls of all shapes and sizes.

To this end Premier Rugby, Sport England and Spoon have joined forces to create and deliver Try Rugby which will benefit over 26,000 children throughout England.

Nick Fletcher, Leeds Carnegie RC Community Manager said: "Try Rugby gives local schools a course in tag rugby that will benefit children and teachers and will enable rugby to still be played long after we have completed the coaching series.

"Tag rugby is a non contact version of rugby and is a pretty straightforward sport that is lots of fun.

"Recent research has shown that professional rugby players are seen as very positive role models which we hope will inspire the participating children - especially as Try Rugby coaches includes professional players from our club."

England World Cup winner Lawrence Dallaglio is putting his weight behind the campaign.

Dallaglio said: "In any rugby team you will see a vast difference in the heights, weights and overall sizes of players. Just look at England's World Cup winning squad; Matt Dawson and Jonny Wilkinson are both about 5ft 10" and 13 stone, Steve Thompson is 6ft and was 18 stone and Martin Johnson is 6ft 7 and weighed 18 stone.

"They are all fit and very health conscious but there is nearly a foot difference in their heights and five stone difference in their weights!

"Consequently rugby is the ideal vehicle to engage and motivate youngsters – they don't need to feel self-conscious about their size as rugby needs every shape and size in a team.

"What's more, playing rugby can engender a great many positive values such as respect, team work and having fun while exercising."

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