British Colleges trial: further information

One question I've had about the the trials for the England and British Colleges team is whether your college needs to be an RFUW member for you to be able to attend the trial. As the question doesn't have a name attached I thought it would be a good idea to reply here so that everyone is clear.

Because the short answer is no. While you should encourage your college to join the RFUW (it probably won't cost them anything), and while RFUW membership is probably necessary for insurance at inter-college fixtures, it is NOT required in order for you to attend the England/GB XV trials.

This is mainly because you are taking part as an individual, so the insurance for the trials day, and any subsequent matches, is a matter for British Colleges Sport - the organiser of the event - not you or your college. Also the English and British Colleges representative teams are not RFUW teams (unlike - say East Region or England U20s) so actually whether or not your are a member of an RFUW registered club or college is irrelevant. 

However I now discover that there are some eligibility requirements that I wasn't aware of earlier - though in practice I cannot see that any of these will be a problem:

• Your college needs to be a member of British Colleges Sport. However, if its a local authority college is almost certainly will be. If in doubt you can check you college's affiliation here.
• I also discover that you actually have to be aged "over 16 and under 19" on the preceding 31st August - so its not quite any age, but its certainly covers all of you - and for both this season and next. In essence therefore its a U19 team.
  
• If you attend more than one college then its a bit complex - but basically the college where your spend the most hours has to enter you.

In short all you need is to get someone at your college to sign that form - and even that may be unnecessary as BCS have contacted us inviting us to put forward names. It is possible that this is an error on their part, but if so they have now made the same error twice - so if you college can't/won't nominate you... we probably can! Just ask.

After that all you need to do is get Wednesday afternoon off college on 3rd December, and make your way to Northampton - and unfortunately over to you on that.