The Leeds Rhinos Foundation and Leeds Active Schools provided a memorable day of finals Tag Rugby yesterday for 20 schools at John Charles Centre for Sport with special guest Andy Yates on hand to present medals to the winning team from Holy Family Catholic Primary School
Leeds Rhinos first team player Andy Yates joined Year 5 and 6 pupils from 20 Leeds Primary schools who had qualified from regional tournaments around the city over the months of March and April for another impressive tag rugby event organised by the Leeds School Sports Partnership officers and staff from the Leeds Rhinos Foundation.
At the excellent facilities at John Charles Centre for sport, the group stages games saw four teams progress to the semi-finals for the event with Blackgates, St Mary's Horsforth, Holy Family and Rawdon St Peter's all winning their groups to enter the knockout rounds.
The two Semi Finals proved to be tightly contested affairs between four of the best teams in Leeds over the qualifiers and finals group stages and with a place in the final to play for, Blackgates managed to edge out Rawdon St Peters 4-3 in the first semi-final joined by Holy Family Catholic Primary School, who were impressive winners in a 3-1 defeat of St Mary's Horseforth in the second semi-final.
Holy Family, who remained unbeaten on the day, then managed to round off their tournament in style with a fantastic 7-2 victory over fellow contenders Blackgates in a final that demonstrated how well the teams had adapted to the game over the last two months, with some excellent tries and good ball movement in the game leading to nine tries overall.
The memorable day was completed for the four finalists when they were then presented with medals by Leeds Rhinos first team player Andy Yates, capping off a total of 7 tournaments across this city in 2015, for over 120 primary schools and more than 1440 year 5 and 6 children taking part.
Shaun Mulhern from the Leeds School Sports Partnership, who had overseen the organisation of the tournament at John Charles Centre for Sport, commented on the success of the festivals ran in partnership with the Leeds Rhinos Foundation this year:
"For the first time, Rugby is actually starting to be on the heels of athletics, we've had well over 100 schools take part and I think one of the benefits of having the Leeds Rhinos Foundation involved is that they can go in and support schools to actually coach the kids so that when they turn up here they are ready to play but also the have that high profile that can provide the link for the kids who are really inspired by the game of Rugby to feed them into the local community clubs.
"It's really quite promising to see young children from age nine to eleven playing rugby and really enjoying it and also showing some real promise, certainly for the future of the game, so from a Rugby League development point of view this is exactly what we want."
Jonny Wainhouse, Community Manager for the Leeds Rhinos Foundation added:
"A massive thank you to Andy Yates for coming down today and coming to do a presentation, it's amazing for kids to meet their role models in the Leeds Rhinos players and adds extra spice to the event but also a massive thank you to the partnership we have with the active Schools Programme for putting these events on for this amount of children."
The video for this years event can be seen below: