England's top U18s

After yesterday's U20 announcement, today it was the turn of the U18s who will be part of the new Talent Development Group (there will be no U15 group this season, due to the reorganisation). The names can be found on the RFUW website. No-one from Letchworth, but its still worth looking at as it is really interesting to see the geographic spread of players.

16 of the 32 girls come from six clubs, and five are from one club - London Irish (a fact that will result in the odd comment or two I suspect). In addition Aylesbury produce three, while Gloucester, H3, Newquay and Welwyn provide two each - but that does mean that 22 clubs are represented, which is (without checking) pretty good. The appearance of a few clubs that are not normally high on the list of "big names" is also good to see - Furness (Cumbria), Malton & Norton (Yorks.), and Tavistock (Devon) for instance - but most of the clubs are familiar names and chances are that anyone who played for our U18s last year will have played against most of the girls on this list.

This season the route into the TDGs will be via the new divisions, instead of the old regions. It will be interesting to see whether this results in any change to the range of clubs getting girls into the highest level of junior rugby.