The 12 Premiership Clubs including Leeds Carnegie will be running Try Rugby, a new initiative to introduce young children in the area to rugby. We are doing this with our partners Wooden Spoon and Sport England through the National Sports Foundation.

One of the things we are hoping to do, as well as getting more young people to play the game, is help tackle the growing issue of childhood obesity. Today nearly a third (31.1 per cent) of 11-year-olds* are now overweight or obese and the statistic is rising. Exercise is a great way of dealing with this and rugby is the perfect sport to do it - all shapes and sizes have their place in rugby - just look at the different shapes and sizes needed to play prop, second row, back row or scrum half.

Children across the country are just some of the 23,000 children throughout England who will benefit from the initiative. England World Cup winner, Lawrence Dallaglio, Honorary President for Spoon is putting his weight behind the campaign and 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 weighs 18 stone. They are all fit and very health conscious but there is nearly a foot difference in their heights and 5 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.'

Wooden Spoon along with Sport England through the National Sports Foundation have each contributed £130,000 to Try Rugby; the scheme offers 23,000 pupils aged 8-10 across England the chance to try out rugby, many of whom will be trying it for the first time.

Wayne Morris, Head of Community for Premier Rugby 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 pretty straightforward sport and it is lots of fun. Recent research has shown that rugby players are seen as very positive role models which we hope will also inspire the participating children."

Try Rugby kicked off in September 2008 all thanks to Sport England, Premier Rugby and Spoon.

* - Department of Health 2006