Good luck to Hayley and Sasha

Hayley and Sasha are off on SUNDAY [not Saturday - that'll teach me to rely on information on the RFUW website!] to Brunel University in North London, but not with anything academic in mind. While rugby for everyone else has finished, and we still have two months to go until next season, for these two girls the 2008-09 season effectively begins here - at RFUW's High Performance Academy (HPA) - where they will compete for places in the elite U18 Training Development Group (TDG) (there is nothing RFUW likes more than a good acronym!). This consists of the leading 30 girls in the country who receive extra support and training during the season, take part in the junior "Super League", and also play against any touring national teams* if they are in the right age group.

About 100 girls will be attending, and the top 20-30 will be selected join last year's TDG at a final selection at Hartpury College in August.

Sasha was in the TDGs for 2006-07 and will be trying to win back her place, while for Hayley this will be her third and (as its her last year in the age band) final attempt. Hayley has made it through the first selection on each occasion to date, but has yet to make that final step. Hopefully it will be third time lucky this time.

Good luck to both of them.

*Footnote: It is worth saying that (surely?) in any other country the "TDG" would be the national U18 squad, but RFUW have a strangely precious attachment to the word "England". Admittedly they are selected as the best 30 girls, and not as a balanced team, so (in theory) there could be eight scrum-halves and no props but, that minor quibble aside, the needless bureaucratic precision is annoying - especially when you try to explain it to grant making bodies or the press!

So even though the TDG is made up of the top 30 girls in England, and it is an official squad selected by the national union, and everyone in the squad is England qualified, and they play games against age group national teams from other countries, far be it for anyone to ever hint at the possibility that it might be in any way an England squad - doing that really does get your wrist slapped, believe me. You'd think that national officials would have better things to do...

Personally I fail to see what is remotely gained by being so pernickerty - well, other than presumably making it difficult for the girls to access grants that they might otherwise be eligible for if they were "England U18s". Oh - and losing out on some screeds of good publicity because newspapers are (not unsurprisingly) unwilling to try to unravel the complexities of the concept. <Sigh>.